


chrysalis

by liadan14



Series: pumpkin gnocchi verse [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cooking, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Meet the Family, Mentioned Andy/Booker/Nile, Mentioned Booker/Nile, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Non-Chronological, Relationship Reveal, Religion, Team as Family, discussion of religion, improper use of olive oil, mentioned Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:54:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26566171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Joe is having a very taxing day.In fairness, no one expects to begin the day by coming face-to-face with one’s lover’s estranged family, standing on the doorstep when one had been expecting the postman, or perhaps the drunk Frenchman from next door.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: pumpkin gnocchi verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015747
Comments: 1217
Kudos: 1967





	1. biscotti

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: this fic contains mentions of homophobia, death of a close relative, mourning/grief and explicit sexual content.

Joe is having a very taxing day. 

In fairness, no one expects to begin the day by coming face-to-face with one’s lover’s estranged family, standing on the doorstep when one had been expecting the postman, or perhaps the drunk Frenchman from next door. 

In even more fairness, it's nine in the morning, and even Booker doesn’t start that early.

“We are looking for Nicolò,” a middle-aged woman tells him imperiously, in fluent Italian with the clear expectation he will understand and answer in the same language even though they're in Hamburg.

Nicky's in the shower, which leaves Joe to invite their guests in and make them comfortable until Nicky comes downstairs. Blessedly, Nicky retains a high level of Italian coffee snobbery from his youth, which means that Joe is capable of offering the women who might be Nicky’s mother and sister a cappuccino (since it is before lunchtime and therefore still permissible to have milk in one’s coffee).

“Do you take sugar?” He asks, knowing it is a fool’s errand even as he speaks.

The older woman sniffs imperiously.

The younger asks for biscotti. 

Joe has to root through the cabinet for a full five minutes to find the tin of biscotti Nicky made a week ago and then declared a failure. Joe had thought they were delicious, but then, Nicky has yet to cook him something he doesn’t find delicious.

“Nicky said they were terrible,” he says apologetically as he offers the younger woman the tin. “I though they were quite nice.”

She takes a bite. “Not enough snap,” she says (exactly as Nicky had). “Is that cardamom?”

“Yes,” Joe says. “We try to, ah, combine our heritages in our food.” _We_ , he says, as if any of their more adventurous culinary pursuits are his idea.

“It’s a nice flavor,” she allows.

Nicky comes down the stairs, then, rubbing his hair dry on a towel that he will presumably hang over the balustrade and then forget about until it annoys Joe enough to point out in three or four days. He freezes on the bottom step when he sees who is sitting in the living room, eating biscotti.

No one says anything for quite a long time.

“Why would you offer them that biscotti?” Nicky asks eventually in his heavily accented German. “It’s terrible.”

“Well,” Joe says reasonably in the same language. “We don’t have any other biscotti lying around.”

“Hm,” Nicky says, a noise which indicates he would rather Joe have not served any biscotti at all. Thus it goes with foods that Nicky deems failed: they are tried once and then either Joe eats up the leftovers before Nicky can throw them out, or they are gone.

“How long have you lived here?” The woman Joe is almost positive is Nicky’s mother asks suddenly, still in Italian.

When it becomes clear that Nicky is not answering the question, Joe says, “We’ve been in Hamburg for about three years now. Before that, we lived in London.”

“You lived in London together, then, too?”

Joe looks over at Nicky helplessly, but Nicky appears to still be frozen solid. “For about four years,” he says.

“Hm,” the woman who must be Nicky’s mother says, sounding so exactly like her son when he disapproves of something that Joe’s heart aches.

They are all silent for a very long, excruciating moment. Perhaps-Nicky’s-sister takes another bite of biscotti, but it doesn’t crunch. It really does lack the snap.

“And I suppose you claim to love my son?” Nicky’s mother asks Joe at last.

Nicky takes a sharp breath and that is what makes Joe react, more than his mother’s words.

“Do I claim to love him?” Joe asks. “No more than the sun claims to rise in the east. No more than earth claims to revolve around the sun. In fact, I claim that I love him as immutably as either of those facts, and that I love him as constantly. Every morning, the sun rises, and every morning, I love Nicky. Every moment, the earth travels around the sun, and every moment, I love Nicky.”

“Joe,” Nicky says, chiding. The smile playing at the corner of his lips belies his tone. “Must you?”

“I must,” Joe says, flashing his most charming smile at Nicky. “You know I must. Won’t you introduce me to our guests, my heart?”

Nicky gives him the most long-suffering look Joe has seen on his face since the last time Booker talked them into watching the Darts World Championship. He takes the hand Joe offers nonetheless, allows himself to be led into the living room.

“Joe,” he says, “this is my mother, Lucia. And my sister, Elena. Mamma, Elena, this is Yusuf Al-Kaysani, my husband.”

Elena’s eyebrows shoot up. Lucia’s mouth twitches, but otherwise, her face does not change.

“You asked this man to marry you?” She asks instead, and Joe wonders if he should feel insulted.

“He asked me,” Nicky says.

“Many times,” Joe adds.

“Why,” Elena asks, having drained her cappuccino, “would anyone ask Nicolò to marry them more than once?”

“What can I say,” Joe asks, spreading his arms wide. “I took one bite of his pumpkin gnocchi and I was a man in love.”

-

Nicky first met Joe at Andy’s flat. He had been leaving and Joe had been coming, but he had found Joe arresting enough to get caught in the doorway for long minutes until Quynh had to remind him he would miss the last train out to his tiny, one-bedroom apartment barely still within London.

“I’m sorry to see you go,” Joe had said, so earnestly that Nicky had thought of the interaction fondly for days afterward.

They met for the second time in a terrible night club Andy and Quynh had dragged them both to to celebrate something or other – Quynh’s Master’s degree or Andy’s birthday or both or neither, it wasn’t as if those two needed much of a reason to celebrate. Nicky was reasonably certain he had only been brought along because Quynh felt sorry for him. They were both research assistants for the same professor, and over the course of a long night of grading papers, he had found himself spilling his whole story to her: how he had grown up in rural Italy surrounded by devout Catholics (at least when it came to judging the actions of others), before heading for seminary school at age eighteen when he could no longer pretend he would ever fall in love with a woman, leaving the church at twenty-two in disgust at the never-ending reports of pedophilia, living in his parents’ house again for a month before realizing that he would never be able to be himself until he left it all behind, running away to London leaving a letter behind to explain himself.

He must have sounded lonely.

How standing awkwardly against the wall in a club blasting the music of someone who referred to himself as “Mr. Worldwide”, watching Quynh and Andy dance, was supposed to help was anyone’s guess.

“Want to get out of here?” Joe yelled in his ear.

Nicky turned to him, shocked. 

“It is very loud and I don’t think they’ll be needing us anytime soon.” Joe gestured towards the dance floor, where Quynh and Andy were doing something to each other that Nicky would have been ashamed to do in his own bed.

“Alright,” Nicky said. 

Outside the club, Joe heaved a sigh of relief. “I love them, but going dancing with them is awful,” he said.

“Is going dancing without them better?” Nicky asked skeptically. Short of drinking more alcohol than he was comfortable with, he couldn’t see himself able to enjoy that kind of situation.

Joe laughed, and Nicky felt a deep thrill in the pit of his belly. _You don’t know he’s gay_ , Nicky reminded himself. And even if Joe was, he could do much better than an inexperienced ex-priest. The man was gorgeous.

“I think we could have fun,” Joe told him, and grabbed Nicky’s hand to spin him around in a mockery of a ballroom dance.

Nicky was glad it was too dark for his flush to be noticeable.

“I could murder a falafel wrap,” Joe said. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” Nicky agreed. “What’s falafel?”

“What’s falafel?” Joe repeated, shocked. “Nicky! I have so much to teach you! You’ve had a kebab, right?”

Nicky ended the night having eaten what felt like half a cow stuffed into flatbread and drowned in sauce, as well as a good portion of Joe’s falafel wrap.

“I can’t believe you’ve never tried that before,” Joe laughed as they waited for the first early train from King’s Cross, miraculously in the same direction.

“I grew up in Italy,” Nicky said in his own defense. “We’re very proud of our own cuisine.”

“Alas,” Joe said, affecting great sadness. “Not only do I keep halal, I also don’t eat meat. Italian cuisine is not kind to me.”

“That’s not true!” 

“No?”

It must have been Joe’s smile, or Nicky’s exhaustion, but the next thing he said was, “I’ll prove it to you. Come over tomorrow, I’ll cook you the best vegetarian Italian food I know.”

That was how it started.


	2. bruschetta

“Nicolò made gnocchi,” Elena repeats, and she looks much like Nicky did when Andy had tried to convince him skinny jeans were a good idea (they were the best idea Andy has ever had and Joe wants to fall to his knees in worship every time Nicky wears the damn things, but that’s beside the point).

Joe opens his mouth to protest that Nicky makes the best gnocchi in the world, but he’s stopped momentarily by the arresting pink flush on Nicky’s cheeks. His husband is a stoic man, but his blushes have always been his worst tell. Joe raises an eyebrow at him.

“Later,” Nicky says – pleads, really, and Joe subsides. “What brings you two to Hamburg?” 

Nicky’s mother looks away, out the window, steely-eyed. 

In the second before Elena speaks, Joe knows what she will say, the muted blacks and greys of their clothing and the black hat still firmly fastened to Lucia’s head coming together in his mind when he had barely registered them before.

“Papa died three days ago,” Elena says.

In the silence following her announcement, Joe has to stop himself from rubbing his hands up and down the sides of his jeans, has to curb the impulse to rest a hand on Nicky’s shoulder, has to forcibly keep himself from reaching out. It’s not what Nicky would need, it is only what Joe wants.

Eventually, Nicky sits heavily on the sofa. “Ah,” he says. “When is the funeral?”

“Sunday,” Lucia says. “Will you be coming?”

“Do you want me to?”

She purses her lips. “Would I be here if I didn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Nicky says, and Joe – Joe has to leave, has to go to the kitchen and put the kettle on, tears building behind his eyes at the reminder that his beautiful, wonderful husband has gone so long without any acknowledgement from his family.

He takes deep breaths as he sorts out the tea tray. Mourning is not for coffee; mourning is for hot tea, strong and sweet, and if he can’t touch Nicky in front of these people, can’t rub even harder in their faces than he already has how loved Nicky is, he will do what he can to show it as Nicky would, with food and drink. 

He sets the tea tray down on the coffee table, presses Nicky’s favorite tea mug in his hand (the squat one with the rounded belly and the lovingly hand-drawn kittens chasing each other around the bottom), tea as sweet as he knows Nicky secretly likes but doesn’t drink too often because it’s not healthy.

Nicky doesn’t say anything, but his jaw unclenches.

It is enough.

-

Nicky woke up already panicking.

He didn’t know what possessed him to invite a beautiful man to his tiny, cramped apartment for a home-cooked Italian meal. Probably the infernal vodka-red-bull combination Andy had handed him at the club.

“Okay,” he told himself, breathing deeply. “You handled years of seminary school. You can handle this.” He sat up in bed, grabbed his laptop from the table and started googling what foods, exactly, were halal. 

Really, there were only two issues. Meat was the first, but there were plenty of foods without pork or its by-products, and Nicky had no intention of ever cooking goat or lizard in the first place, even if Joe did eat meat.

No, the true problem was something Nicky had not foreseen. There was no shortage of vegetarian Italian foods. Nicky grew up on them, rich mushroom risottos, pizzas with a crisp base and a thin spread of tomato sauce topped with fresh mozzarella di bufala, but with every recipe he googled, he came up against the issue of alcohol. Joe said he kept halal, after all, and Nicky hadn’t seen him take a drink of anything but sparkling water last night. And how to make a good tomato sauce with no red wine? Nicky didn’t know. Nicky didn’t even really know how to make tomato sauce, but he did know that when he saw his mother make it, there was always an open bottle of red wine next to the stove.

He found a halal recipe for risotto and realized, after reading three steps of it, that he had never cooked rice that couldn’t be microwaved.

“Fuck,” he said, falling back against his bed. This was a monumentally stupid idea.

He’d had a vague imagination, when he left Liguria, that he could shed the weight of religion and expectation and begin a new life, that he could put paid to the years of fantasies in which he could hold a hand as strong and large as his own, in which he could be held and comforted against a broad chest, in which he could kiss someone the way he longed to kiss, deep and intense, in the light of day instead of hidden behind the shadows of a church pew. He longed to feel like there was nothing wrong with the way he loved, but after four lonely months in England, he had begun to understand that he carried the feeling of wrongness within him and all the distance in the world wouldn’t set him free until he had conquered it.

It was a foolhardy move, to ask Joe out. Perhaps he would be able to disguise it as a friendly overture.

Nicky groaned against his pillow. He was pretty sure he’d fail at that, too – making friends was hard, now, harder than it ever was as a child, when all his friends had gone to the same school and he’d seen them every day. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it through a whole dinner with Joe without saying something very obvious about how handsome he found Joe, or how sweet his low laugh sounded.

That was, of course, presuming he would manage to prepare dinner.

His phone chimed as if on cue, and he scrambled for it in the sheets.

_Hey, it’s Joe. Are we still on for tonight?_

It would have been Nicky’s chance to back out, to call it off, to at least invite Joe out for a meal instead of going through with this truly ridiculous plan, but—

_Definitely. Is seven OK?_

He did none of those things.

Instead, he pulled together his most cogent memory of the kitchen at home, when he’d gotten conned into kneading the gnocchi because of his “asbestos fingers” when Elena had been too squeamish to touch the hot-potato-flour mixture. The internet suggested adding pumpkin to the gnocchi, and Nicky figured he might as well try as hard as he could to impress Joe if this was his only chance.

He dragged himself to the Tesco’s around the corner, still feeling the lack of sleep and the two drinks a lot more than he should. He felt older than twenty-three, and sheltered and altogether entirely unsuited to wooing a man like Joe. He was a student, he had told Nicky yesterday, an art student, and he hoped to one day be a teacher. He had scrubbed a hand through his messy curls as he said it, sheepish, and Nicky had told him far too seriously that it was a beautiful ambition.

God above, even remembering it made Nicky feel like an idiot. 

He bought tomatoes and garlic on impulse, deciding no Italian meal could be complete without them, and by the time he’d made a lap around the store, he had decided to add a baguette. Meals had courses, right?

He made the bruschetta first, chopping tomatoes and garlic and only once his own thumb. He added in herbs – dried, because he was in England and he didn’t know which would disappoint his mother more, dried herbs, the sad excuse for fresh thyme on sale in the store or the fact that what had finally convinced her only son to take up cooking was a handsome man – oil and salt and covered the bowl before turning to the much more difficult part of his day.

It was already three, so he figured it was as good a time as any to boil the potatoes and roast the pumpkin. He remembered how upsettingly hot the dough had been, when he’d stumbled into the kitchen, fresh from kissing Alessandro Lombardi in the vestry, confused and aroused and desperately unhappy and smelling like the mothballs trapped between the choirboy robes they had been tasked with hanging up. He had barely noticed how the dough had burned his hands until his mother had taken it away, after he’d been pounding at it for so long his palms were bright red. 

Nicky’d never actually made pumpkin before, but the recipe had said to slice it into wedges. He was momentarily stymied by the mess of seeds and strings he discovered within, but a quick google search told him how best to deal with that. He really was deeply pathetic.

He chopped basil and garlic while the potatoes boiled, mindful of the band-aid wrapped around his thumb. He didn’t have a food processor, so the next part would be more than a bit experimental. He waited until the potatoes were done to start on the pine nuts (the internet claimed potatoes were done when they slid off a knife. This seemed to Nicky to be a dubious claim because surely gravity decided that, but he had gotten this far on tips from food blogs, so he kept going).

Roasting the pine nuts in a pan was one of the more stressful experiences of his life.

They weren’t terribly burned when he took them off the heat, so he would have to count it as a success. 

He laid them out on a cutting board and put a layer of plastic wrap on top before fetching his hammer from underneath the shoe shelf by the door and pounding them to dust. 

Muttering a silent apology to his neighbors, he added the pine nuts to the chopped basil and crushed garlic, carefully measuring out the oil and lemon juice before adding in salt and pepper.

Then, he fell asleep on the couch for two hours. 

Cooking was much more difficult and taxing than he had imagined.

He woke up at six, still in his sweatpants and sweated through T-shirt, and swore heavily. One more thing in his life that had become permissible since he left the church.

After a quick shower, he had put on the least objectionable clothes he owned – jeans and a clean T-shirt – before returning to his tiny kitchen, which was a disaster area.

The pesto had congealed to some sort of sludge, swimming in oil, and Nicky was terrified for a moment that he’d have to start all over, but it turned out he just needed to stir it for a few moments until it was the right consistency again. The bruschetta smelled deliciously of garlic and herbs, but the tomatoes and oil had created an unappetizing soup in the bottom of the bowl. Nicky drained it over the sink and realized with a sinking feeling that he was serving a half bulb of garlic on a first date.

He sighed at himself.

It was too late to change it now.

He went back to the worst part of the project, then. The gnocchi. He peeled the pumpkin flesh out of the skin and dumped it in the biggest bowl he owned, followed by the potatoes, what he guesstimated to be the right amount of flour, and two eggs to bind the whole mess together. He’d already almost finished kneading it all by the time he realized he’d forgotten salt. He covered the cardboard salt container in sticky trails of dough as he poured in something approximating a teaspoon, too close to running out of time to care.

Rolling out a dough this sticky felt wrong.

Nicky had to google it three times to be sure he was doing the right thing, and even then, he wasn’t sure.

It was six thirty, though. 

He got the fuckers cut, even rolled them up on a fork so they’d have the raised bumps in the middle they were supposed to, and dropped them into boiling water.

It was slow going, draining each group of gnocchi he finished through a slotted spoon before depositing them in a soup plate. They were such a bright orange. His family would have hated them. So clearly not the original recipe. The thought filled Nicky with something a lot like pride. Perhaps this was how he could find peace with home. Perhaps, tomorrow, he would try the risotto. Perhaps, he considered, Joe would want to try it with him.

With the gnocchi finished for now, he sliced the baguette with only minutes to spare and set it in the oven.

The buzzer sounded just as he closed the oven door.

His T-shirt was covered in streaks of flour. 

Nicky sighed and dusted himself off as best as he could. 

“Nicolò,” Joe said as Nicky opened the door. He was leaning against the doorframe, wearing dark jeans and a leather jacket, except that Nicky knew it must be fake leather because a man as principled as Joe would care about that, and Nicky wanted to bury his hands in Joe’s hair and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe.

“Joe,” he said instead. “I’m glad you’re here.” He held the door open, and Joe, instead of coming in, wrapped Nicky into a hug.

“Thank you for inviting me,” Joe told him. “It smells wonderful.”

Nicky laughed as they pulled apart. “That would be all the garlic.”

“A man after my own heart,” Joe said, toeing off his shoes and stepping into Nicky’s flat. Nicky was helpless to do anything but follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed a full chapter of the Nicky cooking show.
> 
> The entire impetus for this fic was literally the following brain fart: what if modern!Nicky didn't know anything about cooking but wanted to impress Joe so badly he learned and then just...never told Joe.


	3. gnocchi

It’s Elena who asks him. Joe suspects Lucia has too much pride.

“You will come home with us, for the funeral, no?”

Nicky swallows thickly, his mouth tightening as he folds his one, singular black suit and puts it in his suitcase. Joe had hoped to get him alone, to have a moment to just hold his husband and tell him how sorry he is that this is how he has to say goodbye to his father. It’s impossible with Elena shadowing the doorway to their bedroom.

Joe shrugs helplessly, eyes trained on Nicky. “I will do whatever you think is best.”

“I want you with me,” Nicky says plainly. He hasn’t spoken much, and Joe can tell why. His voice is raw. “But I don’t want to fight Mamma over it.”

“Ach,” Joe scoffs, the guttural German sound better than any of the many curse words on his tongue. 

“You might as well bring him,” Lucia says imperiously from the doorway. No privacy, these people will grant them no privacy at all. “The whole town has been wondering if he would come.”

“And how,” Nicky asks, his jaw clenched so tight Joe can almost hear his teeth creak, “does the whole town know about Joe?”

“You remember Matteo Pugliese?” Elena asks.

Nicky nods tightly.

“He came to Hamburg on a class trip, last year. He saw you two having dinner by the river and put a picture on his Instagram account.”

“He’s not old enough to be on Instagram,” Nicky counters, turning away. Joe wants to laugh. Nicky finds that no one under the age of twenty-five should be on social media, and even then, they should have considered very carefully if they want to run for political office.

“Matteo is sixteen,” Elena says. “He has Instagram and no one can do anything about it.”

“Sixteen,” Nicky repeats. His tone reveals nothing, but Joe knows he is surprised.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Lucia says, and descends the staircase imperiously.

Nicky closes his eyes for a count of five, and when he opens them again, Joe knows he is not ready to talk about anything.

“I’ll pack your suit,” he says. “Lucky it’s fall break and you don’t have to go to school. Maybe Sebastien will feed the monster.”

“Right,” Joe says. “I’ll go ask.”

Booker is slow to answer the door, and Joe is already dreading having to talk to him, hungover and bad-tempered. When he finally does appear, he seems less awful than normal, which Joe is glad for. Good neighbors are hard to find in big cities, and with just the two maisonettes in their little house, they’ve been worried, recently, they would lose Booker to his drinking eventually.

“Morning,” Booker says.

“Morning,” Joe says. “Listen, I’m here to ask you a favor. Nicky and I have to go to Italy for a few days. Could you feed Aramis?”

“Alright,” Booker yawns. His shirt is unbuttoned. “Should start calling him Porthos, by now, though. Everything alright?”

Joe shakes his head, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “Nicky’s father…” he trails off.

“Ah,” Booker says. “My condolences.”

“Sebastien,” a voice Joe does not recognize calls from within Booker’s apartment, and Joe raises his eyebrows. 

Booker flushes deeply red. “I, ah, should get back. I still have your key from last time.”

Joe nods and heads back to his own apartment, albeit unwillingly.

He finds Aramis hiding under the bed, scared off by the unknown guests. “Ah, dear one,” he murmurs into Aramis’ dark fur. “You have the right idea.” He lets Aramis rub his face on his fingers before stroking over his head a few times and kissing the cat’s flank. “We’ll be back. Be nice to Booker.”

He groans, righting himself, and throws a few pairs of boxers and socks into the suitcase as well as button-up shirt or two. He’s just closing the suitcase when Nicky comes back into the room. “I got us on the same flight as Mamma and Elena,” Nicky says.

“That’s good,” Joe says, although he’s not entirely sure it is. “Booker will feed the monster.”

“Alright.”

With nothing left to say, they gather their things and leave the house.

-

Joe seemed to enjoy the bruschetta – he ate four slices of toasted baguette slathered in tomato and garlic, at any rate, humming in the back of his throat and chasing the bits of tomato that fell to his plate with a fork. 

They ate at the patio table Nicky used as a dining room table, because his apartment was too small for anything else and it had only cost ten pounds at IKEA, and Nicky would have been ashamed, would have found everything terrible and awkward, if only Joe was not so at ease.

“That was delicious,” Joe said, licking his lips. “I believe you’ve already proved your point.”

Nicky had felt his ears flush. “I have a whole main course to fuck it up,” he pointed out.

Joe threw his head back and laughed, and the line of his throat made Nicky remember all over again why it had been worth spending his entire Saturday learning how to cook.

He fried the gnocchi in oil and then added pesto into the pan at the very end, and tried to ignore how Joe watched his every move, how closely Joe stood behind him in the kitchen. “Ignore the kitchen, please,” he said. “I’m a messy cook.”

“Believe me,” Joe told him. “I’m not looking at your counters.”

A pleasant shiver wound its way down Nicky’s spine.

Joe moaned around his first bite of gnocchi, eyes sliding shut as he tasted them.

Nicky, who had spent the better part of his day working on making them and had consequently not eaten anything at all since his kebab last night, nearly forgot about food entirely.

“Marry me,” Joe said when he’d finished his first bite.

“Are you talking to me or the gnocchi?” Nicky asked.

Joe sighed happily around another bite before answering, “While the gnocchi are delicious, it would be a very short marriage, because I would eat them all. If I married you, I could have gnocchi whenever I wanted.”

Nicky grinned around his fork. “You’d have to persuade me into making them, first,” he pointed out. 

“You are very relaxed,” Joe said.

“Were you expecting me otherwise?”

Joe shrugged. “When we met, Quynh told me to keep my hands off you. She made it sound like you were a wild animal who would run from human touch.”

“Santa Maria,” Nicky muttered disparagingly to himself. “I knew I shouldn’t have told her about my past.”

“Got a lot of skeletons in your closet?”

“Not yet I don’t,” Nicky said, “but if Quynh doesn’t watch out, that may change.”

Joe’s eyes crinkled beautifully in the corners when he was pleased.

“What about you,” Nicky asked, deflecting. “How did you end up in London?”

Joe was a natural storyteller, spinning the quest to find a university in an interesting city far enough away from home to be an adventure into an epic. He told it around bites of gnocchi, heaping praise on Nicky’s skill as a cook in between narrations of his and Andy’s years as undergraduates.

By the end of the meal, Nicky was more sure than he had ever been that he had made the right choice. First in coming here, second in asking Joe out, third in cooking for him.

“I don’t have dessert,” he admitted. “But I could make you an espresso?”

Joe stretched, leaning back on his rickety chair with his arms folded behind his head, the entire breadth of his chest on dizzying display. “I had something else in mind,” Joe admitted.

“Oh?” Nicky asked.

“Mm,” Joe said. “I thought I might be able to talk you into kissing me.”

The idea, the very notion, that Joe should have to put any sort of effort into making Nicky want to kiss him was ludicrous. Nicky was on his feet before he could overthink it, rounding the table and pulling Joe to stand as well. He slid his arms around Joe’s waist, angled his head, leaned in, slid their mouths together.

Joe lips tasted of salt and garlic.

They were as soft and plush as Nicky had imagined.

Joe’s body was firm against Nicky’s, his crisp shirt crinkling as he moved to cup Nicky’s jaw, to deepen their kiss.

Sensation sparked across Nicky’s brain, heating his skin and clogging his mind. He had been able to think, once, before he kissed Joe. Now, having kissed Joe, he wasn’t sure he would be able to ever again. Why he should want to do anything besides kiss Joe, again and again, was a mystery that needed no solving. 

Sadly, Joe pulled away, too soon, nipping at Nicky’s lips when he chased Joe’s mouth. 

“Let me catch my breath,” Joe laughed. 

“Breathing is overrated,” Nicky said, eyes trained on Joe’s pink, swollen mouth, brain still not functioning.

Joe let himself be drawn in again, let Nicky kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until Nicky’s heart was pounding and his hair was a mess from Joe’s hands running through it.

“Joe,” he breathed when they pulled apart again. “Tesoro.”

Joe, eyes bright and molten, crinkling in the corners as he smiled, traced the line of Nicky’s jaw with his thumb. “I like that,” Joe said.

Nicky didn’t know if he meant the kissing, or the pet name, but either way – “Good,” he said.

“Let me take you out,” Joe said.

“Huh?”

Joe’s arms looped around Nicky’s neck, pulled him close, rested their foreheads together. “Let me take you out. Show you what a good time dancing can be, if it’s with me. Let me do this right?”

Nicky’s eyes slid shut. It was everything he had wished for – hoped for, hands deep in too-hot dough at sixteen, tears clouding his eyes when he left home for the last time at twenty-two.

“Alright,” he said, and if it sounded rough, well, he had just been kissed within an inch of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy people finally getting to eat in this fic. Also, finally, a Booker cameo. He'll come back later, hopefully.
> 
> I'm going away for the weekend, so no more updates until next week, but hopefully I'll be back on Monday with a new chapter.


	4. mint tea

Joe shoots Quynh a text before they get on the plane and then spends two hours alternating between worriedly watching Nicky stare out the window and trying to grade exams. 

“You’re a teacher?” Elena asks him, somewhere over Switzerland.

“Yes,” Joe answers, not looking up from Hussein’s French exam. If he can get through exercise two on all the exams before they land, he’ll only have two more exercises left.

“And what do you teach?”

“Art, mostly.”

Elena looks pointedly at the exam he’s grading.

“Germans will let you teach anything if you’re good enough at it and they can’t find anyone else to do it,” Joe allows. “I teach a few language courses, as well.”

Nicky snorts, the first sound he’s made since they got on the plane. “He’s being modest,” Nicky says, still towards the window. “Yusuf speaks better Italian than me, most days, and his Arabic and French are wasted on the German school system.”

Elena leaves, then, because the fasten seatbelt sign has been turned on.

Joe reaches out, rests a hand on Nicky’s shoulder. 

Nicky says nothing, but he doesn’t shrug Joe’s hand off.

In Rome, they take a taxi from the airport to the train station, and then they stand by the platform for an hour, waiting on the next train towards Genova. Joe’s phone rings a half hour in, and he takes the call, stepping away from the awkward silence with unguarded relief.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,” Quynh all but shouts down the line.

“Shh, Quynh, not so loud,” Joe hisses. “We were on a plane.”

“Tell me you didn’t go to Italy to see his family.”

“Alright, I won’t tell you.”

“You _asshole_ , Al-Kaysani, I told you when you met him—”

“You told me shit,” Joe snaps. “Nicky’s father died, Quynh, and just because you scorch the earth you’ve walked over doesn’t mean he does.”

She’s silent on the other end for a long while.

“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry. This is just – he needs his friends, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Quynh says. He’s never heard her say that before. “You’re right; you know him better in this. What do I do?”

Joe huffs a laugh. “I don’t know. You tell him you’re sorry for his loss. That you’re there if he needs someone to talk to. That you understand how hard it is to have a family who doesn’t accept you like no one else.”

Quynh sniffles, just once, on the other end. “Ugh,” she says, voice waterlogged on the other end. “Will you give me a hug when I see you next?”

“Of course,” he says, surprised. “Don’t I always?”

“A proper Joe hug,” she insists.

“Definitely.”

“Alright,” she sighs. “Pass me to Nicky.”

He walks back down the track, hands the phone to Nicky. Nicky takes it and walks off in the direction Joe just came from, and Joe hopes she can do more for Nicky right now than he can.

Nicky’s red-eyed when they get on the train at last. He presses the length of their legs together under the tiny table between them and Lucia and Elena.

After three stops, Nicky asks, “Was he sick for long?”

Lucia looks up from the book she’s been staring at since the Hamburg airport without ever turning the pages. “Not long,” she says. “A few months.”

Nicky swallows tightly. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he says eventually, as if it’s his fault.

Joe knows, in Nicky’s mind, it is his own fault that he left, that he was not there. He tries not to take it personally.

-

Ten minutes into their second date, Nicky blurted out, “I was going to be a priest.”

“What?” Joe asked, bemused. He was sipping a glass of fresh mint tea, leaned back comfortably against the chair in the bar they were in. It had been a little less than a week since their first date, and Nicky had spent the intervening days texting Joe, thinking about Joe and telling Quynh to shut up and leave him alone about Joe.

“I,” Nicky began, blushing. “I just meant. This is all very new to me.”

“Because you were going to be a priest.”

“Yes.”

Joe blinked, slowly, his eyes crinkling in the corners in the way that Nicky had already begun to crave, and then he burst into laughter. “Is this the dark backstory Quynh warned me of?” He teased.

Nicky narrowly avoided running a hand through his hair, which he’d spent a shamefully long time trying to arrange before meeting Joe here. “I suppose,” he said. “It’s not really that much of a big deal.”

Joe raises an eyebrow. 

“My family was very religious,” Nicky explained. “I was, too. The church seemed like a better option than letting everyone down.”

For a long moment, Joe studied him. Nicky used the moment to imagine every awful thing Joe might be thinking of him, right then.

“Was?” Joe asked eventually.

“Excuse me?” Nicky asked.

“You said _I was religious_. Are you not, anymore?”

“Oh.” Of all the things, Nicky hadn’t expected Joe to latch onto that detail. To be honest, he’d been expecting something more in the vein of a question about his vow of celibacy. “I don’t really know,” he said at last. “I couldn’t stomach the Church, at any rate. It seemed like, every day, there was some new scandal, some new horror, being hushed up and pushed aside.”

Joe hummed in agreement.

“I have a hard time believing God could still love me, as I am.” Nicky couldn’t look at Joe as he said it, fingers tracing lines in the wooden table. What an awful conversation for a second date.

Joe reached out and clasped Nicky’s hand in his. “I know what that feels like,” he said.

Nicky chanced a smile at Joe.

“I don’t think God could make any human by mistake,” Joe said, “not a God I want to believe in, anyway.”

It was a nice sentiment, and one Nicky wanted desperately to share. “I hope I’ll believe that, too, someday,” he said.

“Stop me if I’m asking too much,” Joe said, “but your family?”

Nicky shrugged. “They know I’m in London. They know why I’m in London. They haven’t tried to get in touch.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nicky sighed. “It is what it is.” He allowed his thumb to trace across Joe’s knuckles. “I didn’t mean for things to get so serious. I only wanted to tell you why I’m – out of practice. At this.”

“Because you were almost a priest.”

“It won’t stop being true if you keep saying it,” Nicky said, peeved.

Joe’s laugh was as dark and rich as his eyes. “Just trying to picture you in a dog collar, that’s all.”

“I don’t take confession until the third date,” Nicky teased.

He was rewarded with another laugh from Joe. “And here I thought you’d be so innocent and sheltered.”

Nicky allowed his smile to turn sharp. “I may be sheltered, but you wouldn’t believe the shit people say in confession.”

He had been unsure if his memory had embellished their first date, made the flickering bulb in Nicky’s lamp romantic instead of irritating, made Joe out to be more handsome than he was. Now, here, in the low lighting of a bar Joe knows well enough to greet the server by name, having listened to Joe laughing at his awful sense of humor, Nicky was sure: Joe was the handsomest man he had ever met.

“So what you’re saying,” Joe asked when he’d recovered from his laughter, fingers still toying with Nicky’s, “is that I ought to go easy on you, because you’re not used to being out.”

“No,” Nicky said, frowning. “I wouldn’t ask you to hide yourself. I meant that you should go easy on me if I dance like an idiot and my knees go weak every time you touch me, because I spent the last four years in seminary school.”

“I could do that,” Joe said.

He then proceeded to do anything but.

He brought Nicky to a club with music that didn’t make Nicky want to claw his ears off, and despite both of them being completely sober, Nicky felt drunk within moments of Joe leading him onto the dance floor. It was crowded, enough so that he didn’t feel watched, and the air was humid with the bodies surrounding them. 

Joe’s hands were steady on his hips, leading him in a steady swaying motion from foot to foot, helping him to catch the beat of the music. By the time Nicky had managed to get the hang of the basic movement of the thing, Joe had insinuated himself entirely in Nicky’s personal space.

“You’re doing just fine,” Joe said against his ear.

Nicky shuddered.

He let Joe drag him closer still by the hips, until they were sharing the same air. 

With the bass pounding in his veins, he found he had the courage to grip at Joe’s hair just like he’d wanted to last week, dragging him in for a kiss.

He woke up the next morning with his legs sore from dancing, his voice shot from talking over the loud music in the club, his lips puffy from kissing, from dragging along the stubble lining Joe’s jaw. 

Today, he would brave a lasagna, he thought, the food that could most surely convince Joe to stay with him and not leave him to wake up alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, I'm back from my weekend away already.
> 
> I am totally blown away by the response to this fic. I am so glad you're enjoying this and commenting on it! I didn't even start writing this with any particular goal in mind, and now here we are. I'm almost done with the first full draft, and looking at it, I'm pretty sure I'll end up with 13 chapters. Hopefully.
> 
> Look forward to next time, when we finally get to Nicky's hometown and Joe continues to be utterly smitten.


	5. lasagna

Joe’s not sure what he imagined the house Nicky grew up in to be like. A villa by the sea full of marble statues meant to look at and not touch? A cottage in the middle of the mountains where they slept four to a room? Some other Italian cliché? The truth was, he hadn’t thought much about it. Their lives together had been forward-focused, neither of them interested in looking back at what had been when what had been had hurt.

Nicky grew up in a normal-sized house for a family (at least in the 1990s; Joe can only dream of being able to afford a free-standing, multistory house in Hamburg). The outside is a deep, lovely terracotta, but otherwise, it looks like any other house: there is a door, there are windows, and roof. There are herbs in the windowsill. Rosemary, thyme and basil.

Just like at home.

Joe has been sure of Nicky for a very, very long time, and he can’t imagine anything would change that, but until today, he also hadn’t been able to imagine that Nicky had brought anything at all of his old life into their home. He’d thought, maybe foolishly, that Nicky’s reticence to speak of this, of here, meant that he had left it behind him. To find that Nicky has brought something of it with him, to find that he’d planted the seeds of his heritage in the garden of their home…

Joe wishes he had known, so he could have honored it.

“We don’t have to stay here,” he says, low in Nicky’s ear, when Nicky lingers by the gate, hesitant to follow Elena up the steps to the front door. “We could get a hotel.”

Nicky looks over at him for what feels like the first time in hours. “There are no hotels here, Yusuf,” he says. 

Of course Joe knows they’re in the middle of nowhere. He just spent almost ten hours getting here. 

Still. “There must be something open,” he insists. “I can check AirBnB.”

“It’s only two nights,” Nicky says. “It’s a waste of money.”

“Not if it makes you feel better,” Joe says, and doesn’t ask, _what if you want to stay longer?_

“Let’s just…get through this,” Nicky says, visibly steeling himself as he steps through the doorway.

Joe follows, because he always will.

When they enter the house, they find Elena, crouched on the floor, with her arms around a child under the age of five.

“Porco dio, she had a child with the idiot,” Nicky mutters to himself, quietly enough and German enough that Elena probably only catches the swearing.

“Nicolò, this is your uncle, Nicolò,” she says to the child, and Nicky freezes dead in his tracks.

The child – Nicolò – little Nicolò? Nicolò Jr.? Nicky the second? Nicolino? – waves with his pudgy little hand and Joe, who sees more than enough of children at work, thinks he might have a heart attack when Nicky waves back.

“Buongiorno,” Nicky says to his nephew. He switches fully to Italian and asks the boy how he is. When this produces a swell of grammatically incoherent responses in the same language, Nicky proceeds up the hallway towards his family, follows them into a living room clearly furnished several decades ago and sits down on a footstool, apparently unaware of anything except the in-depth story Nicolino is telling him about his friend Barbara and his toy truck.

Joe is left lingering awkwardly in the doorway, watching the scene before him.

“Come and help me,” Lucia says imperiously from behind him. “And close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.”

Joe closes his mouth and follows her to the kitchen.

“You haven’t had children yet,” she observes, handing him a carton of eggs and a stick of butter from the fridge.

“No,” Joe says slowly.

“Why?”

“Well, it’s not biologically possible.”

She makes a disgruntled sound. “They have ways around that. Anyway, there is always adoption.”

They’ve talked about adoption, in point of fact. More than once. It’s a thought both of them like, opening their home for children who might need it. Joe had always thought it would be something that would happen when they were older. More adult. Able to afford a third bedroom. He supposes, at thirty-three, he’s about as adult as he is going to get.

“I’m sorry, signora,” he says, as respectful in tone as he can manage given that the words are so rude, “but I wasn’t aware you cared what Nicky and I do.”

“Hm,” she says.

Joe puts the eggs and butter on the counter when she doesn’t turn around to face him again.

“You’re tall,” she says. “Hand me the cinnamon and the walnuts from the shelf up there.”

He does.

He watches her boil a single potato on the stove while she pours milk into a plastic cup measure and sets it in the microwave for a minute, then stir in yeast and sugar. He hands her the flour when she asks for it, and observes as she measures out five and a half cups. 

“You said that Nicolò cooked for you,” she says eventually, staring at the yeast as if this conversation will make it bubble faster.

“Nicky cooks all the time,” Joe says. “He’s very good at it.”

“Hm,” she says. She takes the potato off the heat, drains the water and chops the potato into chunks heedless of the heat. She snaps her fingers impatiently at Joe when he doesn’t hand over the butter fast enough.

“You taught him very well,” Joe says, trying to appease her. “He makes cinnamon rolls just the same way.”

“I didn’t teach him at all,” she snaps. “He never wanted to learn, just like his Papa.”

To his horror, Joe sees that there are tears rolling down her cheeks, even as she wipes them away furiously with her apron.

He would like to say he thinks about what he does next, would like to say he comes up with some notion that he knows how Nicky is to be comforted, so therefore, his mother might be comforted by the same things.

What happens instead is that he sees her crying, and despite feeling very much like this woman doesn’t respect him or the life he has built with her son, he wraps her in his arms because she’s Nicky’s mother and she’s crying.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” he says, and she allows the embrace to go on a moment longer before pulling away, sniffing once, and then going back to her dough. The yeast has bubbled.

-

Nicky had tried the lasagna on Wednesday already, feeling brave, excited to see Joe again on the weekend. He wouldn’t exactly call what he had produced a success. The béchamel had been lumpy and the spinach sauce was much too liquid.

Armed with experience, on Saturday, he started fresh. He chopped garlic and onions into fine little squares and blanched the spinach. He caught himself humming under his breath as he wrung it out over the sink, just like his mother used to. He had been sure that being gay and living with it would be enough to make sure he never became like his parents, but it appeared some things were unavoidable.

Quynh called while he was sautéing the onion. “We’re going out for beer and snooker,” she said. “Want to come?”

“I can’t, tonight,” he said, holding the phone between his cheek and his shoulder as he spread a pinch of sugar over the onions.

“Come on,” she cajoled. “What could you possible have planned that’s more fun than me and Andy?”

Nicky allowed himself a moment to fantasize what he hoped the evening would end with.

“You’re seeing him again, aren’t you?”

Fuck.

“Maybe.”

Quynh sighed, exasperated. “Didn’t you just go out yesterday?”

“I really like him, Quynh.”

“You really like him,” she aped. “What if he hurts you?”

“Thankfully, I am from Liguria, not Murano,” Nicky told her.

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. I’m just saying, you’re diving headfirst into this thing with Joe when you’re basically fresh off the boat. I want to stay friends with you both and I don’t want this ending in tears.”

“I may be ‘fresh off the boat’,” Nicky said, frowning at his onions. They were supposed to be golden brown. It was taking forever. “But I know what I want. Don’t worry about me.”

“Oh sure,” she said skeptically. “The catholic priest says he’ll be just fine with gay sex.”

“Ex-almost-priest, and I want to do things to that man that would get me excommunicated by the Pope personally.”

He heard Andy laugh in the background. “Damn, Nicky!” She said from somewhere far away.

“Don’t support this,” Quynh hissed.

“Don’t be such a worrywart, then,” Andy said easily. “I like you and Joe, Nicky.”

“Ugh,” Quynh fumed. “Don’t come crying to me when this blows up in your face.”

She hung up.

Nicky shook his head. Unreasonably dramatic. It was just a date. Their third, granted, and he would very much like to see more of Joe, but he was an adult and he would survive not continuing to date Joe. If the lasagna didn’t go well.

Deciding that the onions must have had enough by now, he added the garlic and spinach, seasoning it liberally with salt. It had been too bland, on Wednesday. 

“Fuck,” he said, realizing he had forgotten to add tomato paste in with the onions. He added it into the spinach quickly. It wouldn’t get quite as toasted, but close enough. The last time, he’d used broth to get the bits of aroma off the bottom of the pan, but he had a suspicion that therein lay the cause of the overwhelming sogginess of the lasagna on Wednesday. Instead, he just used the crushed canned tomatoes. He tossed in dried oregano, thyme and rosemary liberally. _Someday,_ he thought, _when I’m an adult, I’ll grow my own herbs._

With the sauce taken care of, he turned to the hard part. 

A stick of butter seemed about the right amount. He had run low on béchamel last time, and it had made the corners on top too crunchy. The butter was quick to melt, and he poured on flour until the whole mass was congealed. Whisking constantly, he poured a liter of milk on top. It seemed excessive. It seemed like the flour would never become one with the milk.

Once it had, Nicky had severe doubts it would thicken properly. He felt like he’d been waiting for years, his arm beginning to go sore from whisking.

He’d felt the same way, last time, and left it unattended. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. 

He reached for the nutmeg blindly, still stirring with his right hand, and nearly pulled the whole pot off the stove. Swearing, he righted the pot and poured nutmeg, salt and pepper in awkwardly with his left hand.

Finally, it thickened, going from watery to mashed potato in moments. He pushed it off the stove just in time.

Layering the lasagna was quick work, although he added an extra layer of shredded mozzarella above the tomato sauce, just to soak up extra moisture (and to taste better). He had plenty of béchamel for the top. Too much, really.

He shoved the whole thing in the oven and set a timer.

Joe rang the buzzer ten minutes later.

“You’re early,” Nicky said, opening the door.

Last time, Joe had hugged him. This time, he stepped into Nicky’s space, wrapped his arms around Nicky, and pressed a dry kiss to his lips. “I was impatient,” Joe admitted.

Nicky couldn’t have stopped himself smiling if he tried.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.

“You saw me less than sixteen hours ago.”

“Still.”

Joe’s eyes were so bright, his smile so poorly hidden, that Nicky couldn’t help but kiss him again.

He was vaguely aware that Joe’s back had thumped into the door, but he didn’t quite grasp it until Joe’s legs gave around his thigh and his own leg was pressed suddenly tight between Joe’s. Joe pulled away to gasp for air, head hitting the door as he tilted it back, allowing Nicky to revisit the scene of last night’s crimes, his lips still sensitive from Joe’s stubble and dying to be resensitized. 

“Fuck,” Joe said intelligently, his hips squirming. “Fuck, Nicky.”

It sounded like a marvelous idea.

The oven timer went off.

Nicky pulled away reluctantly and realized Joe hadn’t even taken his jacket off. “Sorry,” he said, flushing. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Jump me?” Joe offered helpfully. Nicky hadn’t moved far enough away to not feel the subtle flex of Joe’s hips as he tried to accommodate an interest Nicky was far more interested in exploring than he was in going back to the kitchen to crumble feta on top of the lasagna.

“No, I meant to do that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so impolite. Come in, make yourself comfortable.”

Trying to breathe deeply through his nose and calm down, he headed back to the kitchen and took care of the feta.

“It smells delicious again,” Joe said. “What have you made me?”

“Lasagna,” Nicky said. “Not al forno.”

“Delicioso,” Joe laughed.

“You speak Italian?”

“I get by,” Joe said in Italian.

“Why do I feel like that means you’re fluent?”

Joe shrugged, leaning against the counters, eyes twinkling. “I am a man of many talents,” he said, still in Italian.

Nicky had thought he couldn’t possibly get any more attractive.

The counter was almost as good a place to kiss Joe up against as the front door.

Joe’s lips were soft against his, his mouth lush and wet and the heat in the kitchen from the oven was enough that Nicky’s head was already swimming before their bodies aligned just right for him to feel a line of fire from knee to chest. His hand had settled at Joe’s hip without his conscious input, the other holding Joe’s back steady, keeping him close.

It shocked a moan out of him when Joe’s hands skirted the line of skin around his waist.

“Too much?” Joe panted against his lips.

“Not enough,” Nicky answered, setting his mouth to the bit of Joe’s collarbone peeking out of his shirt.

By the time the oven timer went off again, Joe had rucked Nicky’s T-shirt almost up to his armpits and Nicky had pulled Joe’s henley so far down he’d probably ruined the neckline.

He couldn’t say he was sad about it, eyes fixed on the love bite he had sucked into Joe’s shoulder as they sat opposite each other and tried to focus on dinner.

“This is delicious,” Joe said, gesturing to his dinner with his fork. “I’m afraid I’m not doing it enough justice because you are also delicious, but you should know that I am deeply enamored with your skills in the kitchen.”

Nicky didn’t quite answer, too fixated on _you are delicious_ , repeating in his brain over and over.

They shared the same dessert as they had last time, except they were both lying down on the couch crammed into the corner of the small apartment this time, Nicky blanketed over Joe, kissing his lips and his neck and his shoulders and his chest. He would say he was blind with desire, if the sight of Joe’s body were not quite so attractive.

“Nicky,” Joe gasped, head thrown back. “Nicky, Nicky, that feels so – Nicky, I need you to stop.”

Nicky pulled away instantly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Am I too much? I just—”

“No,” Joe laughed. “No, Nicolò, you are not too much, you are just right, and I think I will get carried away if I let you keep going.”

“What if I want you to get carried away?” Nicky asked, picking up Joe’s hand in his, thumb rubbing over his knuckles. He kissed Joe again, soft and then increasingly hard. Joe’s eyes were wild when he pulled away. “I want to make you come,” he said.

Joe bit at his upper lip. “Let me catch my breath,” he pleaded. “Nicky, you are something else.”

They breathed together for a long moment, before Joe spoke again. “You said you were sheltered,” he said. “I don’t want to rush.”

“Sheltered does not mean virginal,” Nicky said, feeling as if he’d spent all day convincing people he was indeed old enough to date who he wanted to date. “I’m not going to run scared, I’m not delicate – “

“I might be,” Joe said.

Nicky dropped the thread of his rant, losing it entirely to shock.

“You make me feel,” Joe said, “fuck, this is coming out all wrong. You make me feel a lot, Nicky. And if you want someone to play at becoming…less sheltered with, I may be the wrong person, because I want a lot more from you.”

Nicky waited too long in replying, long enough that Joe tried to pull his hand away. “Just,” Nicky said. “Give me a moment to find the words I want to say?”

Reluctantly, Joe nodded and let Nicky keep holding his hand.

All at once and at the same time not at all, Nicky understood what Quynh had been telling him on the phone, that to take this monumental risk with another person was to become vulnerable. That Joe was brave enough to be so vulnerable for Nicky, and that Nicky could hurt him so badly, even now, if that was what he chose. 

“I think,” Nicky said at last, when he had digested the awful thought that it was entirely in his hands whether or not Joe would be hurt, “that you mean by ‘less sheltered’ that I might be looking for sex.”

Joe shrugged, then shook his head. “I don’t really know what you’re looking for,” he said.

“I’ve had sex,” Nicky said. “I had nothing but sex, in Italy.” It was, perhaps, a slight exaggeration of his level of experience; he’d fumbled, in the dark, with several other confused boys as a teen. Still – sex was sex. “I didn’t like the secrecy and the lack of intimacy. That’s not what I want. I do want to have sex with you, a lot, if I’m honest, but what I want – I want more than anything to have someone to be close to.” To love, he meant, but even with Joe so candid before him, he didn’t dare say it yet.

Joe must have known, though, because he reached out to cup Nicky’s cheek with his free hand. “I would love to be close to you, Nicolò,” he said. “Perhaps we could agree to be gentle with each other?”

“I would like that,” Nicky said.

He woke the next morning wrapped in Joe’s arms, warm and comfortable, with the whole apartment stinking of garlic and cheese left out overnight. It wasn’t quite what he’d envisioned.

It was better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate chapter titles:
> 
> 1: Nicolò and the unbearable vulnerability of human relationships  
> 2: the inherent eroticism of a dude who wants to wait before having sex
> 
> This chapter contains one of two instances where I felt the intense need to put some gratuitous Italian into the fic (a language I do not at all speak). Next chapter is the second time, and I'm sorry already.
> 
> Also, Murano is the Venetian Island where they make pretty glass things. Look, at least I think I'm funny.


	6. cocoa

Andy calls on Sunday morning while Joe is fighting with his tie.

They went to bed early – left the oppressive silence in the living room early, that is, with only Nicolino babbling away, oblivious to the sorrow and anger clouding the atmosphere. Nicky hadn’t wanted to talk. He had brushed his teeth and laid down on the bed facing away from Joe, but he had turned halfway around when Joe laid down next to him, carefully apart.

“Please hold me,” Nicky had said.

Joe had obeyed with alacrity. He had whispered into Nicky’s hair everything he’d been dying to say all day: that he loved Nicky, that he was there for him, that he was so sorry Nicky had to feel this. Nicky hadn’t answered, but he had burrowed deeper into Joe’s hold and fallen asleep almost instantly.

Joe had lain awake for a long time afterwards, listening to him breathe. 

They had awoken only an hour before the church service was due to begin. Nicky is still in the shower when Andy calls.

“You’re not at home,” she accuses.

“No, we’re not,” he says, trying to jam the speakerphone button with his cheek. He ends up disconnecting and having to call her back.

“Sorry. I’m in the middle of getting dressed.”

“Where are you?”

“Italy.”

“What are you doing there?” Andy asks, as if the whole country of Italy were too polluted to be inhabited by humans. In fairness, until yesterday, Nicky and Joe treated it as if it was.

“Nicky’s dad died.”

“Oh, shit,” Andy says. “Fuck, I was gonna complain about your neighbor. Now I feel like a dick.”

“What did Booker do?”

“He was in your apartment.”

“He’s feeding the cat.” Joe runs a hand through his hair, then curses himself out mentally for ruining it. Ah well. It’s not like Nicky’s family can like him less. “Wait, what are you doing in our apartment?”

“I thought I’d visit.” Joe can practically hear her shrug down the phone line.

He closes his eyes and prays for patience. “People sometimes call ahead.”

“I’m not people,” Andy says.

“Go easy on Booker. He’s been having a hard time of it.”

“I’ll say,” Andy snickers.

Joe groans inwardly. “What did you do to him?”

Andy says nothing, but Joe knows when he’s being smirked at.

“Tell me you didn’t steal his new girlfriend.”

“That’s not _exactly_ what happened,” Andy hedges.

Joe sighs. “You know what, I don’t even want to know. Don’t break anything and don’t kill the cat. We’ll be back sometime tomorrow, probably.”

“Is Nicky okay?”

Andy rarely allows for real human emotion to cloud her voice, but when she does, it’s terribly affecting.

“No,” Joe says, sitting down on the bed and ruining the clean lines of his suit. “He’s not. It’s terrible. Everything is awful.”

“Is there anything you…need?”

Bless Andy, it’s almost as if she’s trying.

“You could talk to Nicky. Remind him you’re there for him.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst couple I know,” Andy shudders. “I’ll call him.”

 _You were worse, once,_ Joe wants to tell her. _Remember what you were like, before you and Quynh destroyed each other?_

He doesn’t say it.

For long moments after he’s hung up, Joe sits and breathes deeply.

He stands when Nicky comes back from the shower.

“Mamma said she wanted to give me something, before Church,” Nicky says. As if it were just another Sunday.

“Are you—” Joe starts.

“I can’t, Joe,” Nicky says. “Not right now.”

“Alright,” Joe says. “Let me help you with your tie?”

“Because you did such a good job with yours?”

Joe looks down and realizes he never finished tying it.

It is worth it for the shadow of a smile on Nicky’s face.

Of course, then everything goes to shit.

Nicky’s mother hands him a folded letter on her way out the door, and Nicky reads it.

Joe loiters in front of the house, waiting for Nicky to be ready. He can see the church from here, it can’t be more than five minutes away, but he’s still nervous about being late. It feels like everything here is against them anyway.

When Nicky finally leaves the house, Joe forgets all about that.

“I can’t go,” Nicky says.

“What?”

“I can’t – I can’t go to this. Let’s just leave. Let’s just go home.”

“Nicky…”

“Joe,” Nicky says, and when he finally looks at Joe properly, Joe can see that he’s crying. Joe’s never seen Nicky cry, not in eight years together. He’s seen him tear up a little (the last time Joe proposed), but he’s never seen his eyes go red, never seen tear tracks down his cheeks, never seen this. 

Joe cries at the end of every movie. 

Nicky never does.

“Nicky,” he says again, and pulls his husband into his arms. 

Nicky is stiff as a board, but he allows himself to be held, refuses to let Joe go. He shakes in Joe’s arms. 

“What is it, my love?” Joe asks him. “What happened?”

“Read it,” Nicky says, pressing the letter he just received into Joe’s chest. 

He turns around, arms crossed, drying his eyes with his palms.

Joe skims the letter. It’s in spidery cursive and much too long to read properly when Nicky needs him this much. What he reads of it – it’s hard. He catches phrases: _disappointment, still love you, wish you would come back and forget this business_. The gist is unmistakable. It’s dated the day before Nicky’s father died.

Joe’s throat tightens up. 

His anger has never been his friend. It claws up his stomach, burns hot and insistent. This is one time when he must absolutely not let it get the best of him.

“He’s wrong,” Joe says, and even to himself, his voice sounds wrong. “He’s wrong, my darling. You know he is. I know he is. It is sad he could not live long enough to learn how wrong he is. It is sad he could not see you for what a wonderful person you are.”

Nicky makes a noise, an awful, drowned sob.

“Nicolò,” Joe says again, wishing he could stop just saying Nicky’s name over and over. He wraps Nicky up again, holding him fast from behind in his arms as he does every night in their sleep. He lets Nicky sob, harsh and loud and so unlike him, for as long as either of them can stand it.

“I can’t do it, tesoro,” Nicky says. “I can’t go into that church and—and mourn for him. Not when he still hated everything I am.”

Joe rests his head on Nicky’s shoulder. “If it’s really what you want, we’ll leave now,” he says. “Just…just be sure you won’t regret, later, if you weren’t the bigger person.”

He wishes, for Nicky’s sake, that Nicky were petty enough to leave with him now.

Alas, he knew when he said it that Nicky wasn’t.

They make it to church before the service starts.

-

By the time Joe invited Nicky to come back to his flat, they had been dating for three weeks. After the lasagna, there had been an afternoon in which Joe tried to rectify Nicky’s lacking tourist experience in London, saying he had lived there for four months and hadn’t seen the sights yet. This apparently meant standing in line for an hour to see the Sherlock Holmes museum, which had really only been entertaining due to Joe’s non-stop commentary about what a shoddy exhibition it was.

It was December by then, and it was bitingly, bracingly cold, but they took a long walk down the Christmas markets by the Thames to see something worthwhile afterwards.

“I love all this,” Joe said, gesturing to the stalls full of alternating artisanal products and straight-up junk.

“You don’t celebrate Christmas, though, do you?” Nicky asked.

Joe shrugged. “Not in any religious way, but it’s a vacation whether I want to or not, I might as well enjoy it. Besides, look at all the festivity.”

Nicky wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to be seeing, besides the pink of Joe’s cheeks in the cold and how warmly he was bundled into his winter coat and scarf.

They had gone out for drinks with Andy and Quynh a few days later, which made Nicky more nervous than it had any right to. “You don’t need to worry so much,” Joe had told him, lounging on Nicky’s bed flicking through one of his textbooks like he belonged there (he did, he had spent three of the last four nights sleeping there, curled around Nicky like a comma around a clause). “You’ve already seen them nearly get arrested for public indecency.”

“We weren’t…” Nicky trailed off, gesturing vaguely between the two of them. “They’re your friends, they should think I’m good enough for you.”

Joe laughed loosely, stretching. Nicky was instantly lost to the span of his stomach revealed where his shirt was riding up. He definitely wasn’t good enough for Joe.

“I think Quynh will flay me alive if I make an attempt on your honor,” he said pensively.

“Please do,” Nicky said, his brain still entirely focused on Joe’s skin.

Joe’s laughter was warm. “All in due time, habibi,” he said, and rolled out of bed to press a kiss to Nicky’s cheek. “Let’s go, if we’re late they’ll string me up for ravishing you.”

Nicky spent the evening pressed up against Joe in the too-narrow both of the bar, sipping at a single pint of beer while Joe drank a hot cocoa, allowing Andy to tease them about their as-yet nonexistent sex life and Quynh to inquire slightly too probingly about their dates.

“It’s not fair,” she complained. “I’ve known Nicky for much longer and he’s never cooked me delicious Italian food.”

Joe shrugged. “You must be less worthy than me,” he teased.

“Fuck that. If you only cook for people to get them to fuck you, I’ll be happy to wear a strap-on for some homemade pizza. I have some lovely models.”

“Please don’t,” Nicky protested, blushing despite having gotten used to her irreverence over four months of acquaintance. “I’m happy to cook for all of us.”

“Aw, Nicky, you shouldn’t have said that,” Andy said.

“Why?”

“Because now you’ll have to cook for us all the time,” Joe said, at the same time as Andy said, “I love to see her in a strap-on.”

It was almost worth realizing that he’d need to learn to cook pizza, too, to feel Joe shaking with laughter against him.

It was probably worth learning to cook pizza to have Joe follow him home again and kiss him softly, gently, and with increasing passion, until they were hard and panting into each other’s open mouths, desperate to go one step further but not quite willing to break their vow of gentleness yet.

It was absolutely worth learning to cook pizza when Joe said, after they’d turned off the lights and gone to bed, “I wanted to call you my boyfriend, tonight.”

“Did you?” Nicky asked, heart pounding, turning over to face Joe.

“Mm. I wanted to tell Quynh to stop teasing my boyfriend.”

Nicky swallowed. “I like the idea of being yours.”

“But not my boyfriend?”

“It’s a stupid, English word.”

Joe chuckled. “I think the English would take offense if I just called you mine.”

Nicky had just finally calmed his hormones down enough to sleep, but hearing Joe talk like that – it didn’t help. “I like it,” he said.

“So do I,” Joe admitted. 

“Il mio ragazzo,” Nicky tested the words on his tongue, and found them lacking as well. “Il mio fidanzato.”

“Yes,” Joe said hoarsely. “Call me that more.”

Nicky rested his head against Joe’s, trying to catch his breath from the conversation. “If I do, we’ll never go to sleep.”

“Maybe,” Joe said. “Maybe, tomorrow you could come home with me instead?”

It seemed like a non sequitur, like nothing to do with their conversation, but Nicky knew Joe well enough by now to know that he meant something by it.

He knew himself well enough to know there was nearly nothing he would refuse Joe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so Joe is a ho for commitment in this fic. next time we're earning that explicit rating, be warned.
> 
> This is the second instance of gratuitous Italian. also I think my least fave flashback sequence, it didn't turn out quite how I wanted for some reason. Anyway, google tells me "ragazzo" is italian for boyfriend in like a casual, high school, appropriate for having been dating for three weeks Nicky jesus christ way, whereas "fidanzato" is like...could be my boyfriend, could be my fiancee, screams commitment kinda way. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, I promise I'll stop putting a language I don't speak in the fic now.
> 
> btw I wrote up my recipes, they will be a bonus chapter at the end.


	7. risotto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for additional warnings

There is a man sitting next to Elena that Joe hasn’t yet met. He asks Nicky, in an undertone, if he knows the man, before the service, but Nicky just scoffs. Nicolino is sitting next to him and clinging to his arm, so Joe assumes he must be the boy’s father. Whether he is estranged from Elena, or divorced, or never even married to her in the first place, remains a mystery to Joe.

It seems to calm Nicky, somewhat, to glare at the back of his head.

Joe is uncomfortably aware of the letter folded in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He couldn’t throw it away. Nicky might want it back.

He wants to burn it.

The service is very Italian, and very, very Catholic. So much of it is in Latin that Joe tunes out, people-watching instead.

The church is full, which doesn’t surprise him. Everyone in town has to turn out to this sort of thing. There’s a group of bored teenagers towards the front, jostling each other with their shoulders, poorly hiding their phones in their sleeves when their parents look over.

The unfamiliar man has his hands full with Nicolino, who tries more than once to make a break for the altar. Joe catches the word “flowers” several times and surmises that Nicolino is jealous of a dead man’s bouquets and would like some for himself.

They are very nice bouquets. 

Elena only looks over in exasperation every once in a while, too busy watching her mother with an eagle eye, who is sitting ramrod straight and immobile throughout the service. It isn’t enough for Joe to figure out if she and this mystery man are estranged from each other or not. 

They play Bach, at the very end of the service. It is cliché, a piece Joe intimately associates with sorrow already even if he can’t name the tune. Still, it draws tears into his eyes unpleasantly. He can’t cry here. This isn’t his to cry over, and he curses his own persistent Pavlovian response to sad music.

On the pew, out of sight, he reaches for Nicky’s hand. Nicky grasps it so tight in return that Joe’s knuckles turn white.

Nicky is not crying, either, but perhaps it is a closer thing than usual.

Leaving the church after the service ends is more difficult than anticipated. There is a door, but Lucia stands in it and receives condolence after condolence, handkerchief after handkerchief. Elena, beside her, receives nearly as many.

The unfamiliar man Nicky disapproves of went outside with Nicolino after the first ten.

Nicky receives nothing but openly curious looks.

Vultures.

It is a blessing when Joe’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He turns to pull it out – fuck impoliteness, he feels like a zoo animal at this point.

“It’s Maryam,” he says to Nicky, holding out the phone. “She texted that she wanted to talk to you.”

Nicky takes the phone with a grateful look and disappears out the side door.

“Maryam?” Elena asks in an undertone.

“My sister,” Joe says. He takes a slight pleasure in how uncomfortable she clearly is at the thought of his sister being in touch with not only Joe, but Nicky as well.

He follows Nicky out the door.

It’s a crisp, clear, lovely day. A shame really.

“Hey,” someone says, and Joe turns around to see the man who must be Nicolino’s father. “Hey, uh, Yusuf, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Um, you might want to see this.” He holds out his phone.

Through a spiderweb crack on the upper righthand corner, Joe sees a picture of two men in suits, one behind the other. Only the backs of their heads are visible, the one in front just slightly turned so the profile of his nose is a bare shadow on the picture. The man behind has his arms wrapped around the middle of the man in front. The caption is a single red heart.

It’s a lovely picture.

However, Joe is at a loss to explain why a user named madmatteo04 would have posted a picture of him and Nicky from this morning on his Instagram account.

He scrolls down and finds another of the two of them arriving at the train station yesterday, Nicky pulling the suitcase and Joe with his hands in his pockets, both clearly uncomfortable, with the caption _omg they’re HERE_.

“Here, uh, let me show you,” the man whose phone Joe is holding says. He takes his phone back, scrolls through for a few moments, and then turns it around again.

Joe instantly recognizes the evening the photo was taken. 

It was their seventh anniversary, and they had sprung for a fancy dinner by the water. Nicky had ordered a steak and the sounds he made as he ate it nearly made Joe duck under the tablecloth because only Joe was supposed to get those sounds. He presumed it was fair; Nicky cooked vegetarian for the two of them and only ate meat when they went out, but the _sounds_.

Joe had eaten ravioli.

It had been a lovely night.

On the picture, they’re holding hands across the table.

The caption under the photo reads, _that feeling when the guy from your village who was going to be priest and then vanished without a trace turns out to be living his best life with the man of all our dreams #lgbtq+ #whyareallthegoodonestaken_.

It has over a thousand likes and hundreds of comments.

“Fuck,” Joe says with feeling. “Uh, sorry, Nicolino.”

The man’s face splits into a wide grin. “Nicolino! That’s adorable. Why didn’t I consider that?”

Joe is just about to ask his name when Nicky reappears from behind the church. “Enzo,” he greets the man coolly.

“Nicolò,” Enzo returns, far more friendly than Joe would be in his stead. Joe wonders what happened between them to cause such an imbalance.

“What did Maryam have to say?” He asks Nicky instead.

Nicky shrugs. “The usual. Your mother is making baklava again.”

Joe grimaces.

Every few years, his mother decides to make her own baklava, filo dough and all. It takes days, and she invariably makes so much that no one can eat it all, and then she sends a package of it to Joe and Nicky by mail, which always arrives crumbled and essentially inedible. The last two times, Nicky has been so irked by the entire experience he ended up making his own baklava from scratch, and then Joe is stuck reassuring both his husband and his mother out of earshot of the other that they make the best baklava in the world and he would prefer no other baklava.

Joe doesn’t even like baklava.

Nicky’s lips twitch at the expression on Joe’s face, a ghost of a smile. It feels like it’s been days since Nicky smiled properly. 

“We should visit them again,” Nicky says. “We haven’t seen them since the wedding.”

“Anytime you like,” Joe says. Visiting his family is stressful and usually makes him restless and antsy after two or three days, dying to get out of the house, but he loves them all, and what’s more, Nicky loves them and they love Nicky.

Enzo clears his throat.

Nicky gives him a look that would kill a weaker or maybe just less oblivious man.

“We should head over to the wake,” Nicky says, and turns on his heel.

So far, Joe has liked none of these people especially by virtue of the fact that they hurt Nicky, but Enzo must have done something truly unforgivable. It’s a shame, because Nicolino seems to adore him.

Sighing, Joe waves goodbye to father and son and turns to follow Nicky.

-

Joe’s flat was a marvel.

“Why have we not been here before?” Nicky asked reverently. It was so light. And spacious. There was a convenient half-wall blocking Joe’s bed from the living space. “Why would you ever spend time in my apartment when you could always be here? How do you even afford this place?”

Joe laughed. “In reverse order,” he said, holding up three fingers and counting down as he went, “I rent it from a professor who charges under market value, if I were always here I would go insane, and we have not been here before because I was using you for your marvellous cooking.”

“Joe,” Nicky said, looking at him very seriously. “I would cook in your kitchen any day. I would become your kitchen slave if you would let me enjoy the view from your windows and the much, much shorter train ride to class.”

“Careful, now,” Joe said, voice slipping into the register Nicky had privately named the drive-Nicky-insane register. “You’ll give me ideas.”

“I want you to have ideas about me, naked, in your kitchen,” Nicky said.

“Fuck.” Joe dragged him in by the lapels of his jacket and kissed him soundly, until Nicky nearly forgot he was still carrying groceries and tried to reach for Joe.

“Okay, okay,” Joe said, pulling back. “Dinner. We can handle making dinner.”

Nicky had severe doubts, but he was willing to try.

In Joe’s defense, they made it through most of the cooking process, but then, for most of it they weren’t looking directly at each other. Joe chopped the garlic while Nicky took care of the mushrooms; Nicky fried the mushrooms while Joe got the rice ready; Joe stirred the rice, broth and cream while Nicky grated parmesan. 

It was only when they moved the pot off the heat and Nicky poured the parmesan on top, ready to serve it at last, that they collided again.

“You missed something,” Joe said.

“Huh?” Nicky asked distractedly, trying not to burn himself on the pot.

Joe lifted Nicky’s hand to his mouth and licked a stray bit of cheese off of the side.

Nicky said a number of things he had been forced to wash his mouth out with soap for saying as a child. “Joe,” he said raggedly when Joe pulled away. “What are you doing to me?”

“Am I teasing you, sweetheart?” Joe asked, with a half a smile that only served to make Nicky feel more insane.

“Are you teasing me?” He asked and pivoted sharply to press Joe up against the counter. “I don’t know. Is it a tease,” he hissed out against the soft skin of Joe’s neck, “to make me want you so much I can think of nothing else?”

Joe made a considering noise.

Nicky pulled at his shirt so hard the seams ripped.

“Is it a tease to wake up next to you so hard I can’t breathe and do nothing about it?”

Joe groaned as Nicky bit at his nipple.

“It’s only a tease if I don’t follow through eventually,” Joe said breathlessly, and Nicky fell to his knees in front of him. 

He rested his head heavily on Joe’s hip. “If you want to wait longer,” Nicky said, “I will be fine with that. If you are ready, now, please let me suck your cock.”

“Fuck, how were you almost a priest?” Joe groaned, knuckles white on the countertops.

“I was very bad at it,” Nicky said, and unzipped Joe’s jeans with his teeth.

Joe’s boxer-briefs were pinstriped, and the soft swell of his half-hard dick was frankly mouth-watering. Nicky rubbed his face against it, catching the scent he had only known in hints before, in the traces of sweat Joe left on his sheets before he showered in the morning, in his clothes after a long day. It was so animal, so alive, so real that Nicky felt the inevitable collide of his fantasies into reality like a gut-punch.

“Please,” Joe said.

Nicky had his pants and boxer-briefs around his ankles in seconds, kneeling up to get his mouth around the head. 

The kitchen tiles were too hard, the lines between them burning against his knees. It was the only thing that kept Nicky from floating away entirely when he tasted Joe’s pulse on his tongue. He licked around the head of Joe’s cock, then down the vein on the underside, pressing sloppy-wet kisses on the sides and letting saliva run down the shaft to ease the way, and then he returned to the tip and swallowed the whole thing down.

The noise Joe made above him made Nicky _throb_.

“Nicky, Nicolò,” Joe panted. “What are you doing to me. Did I dream you? Are you really real? How can you be so good for me?”

Nicky whimpered, Joe’s cock still trapped in his throat. He pulled back, slowly, breathed in and pushed himself forward again. His throat clicked and the sound made him greedier.

Joe’s hand carded through his hair.

“Sorry, sorry,” Joe hissed, pulling his hand away, but Nicky grabbed for his hand blindly and put it back in his hair.

Joe grabbed at it firmly and Nicky whined around him.

“You want me to fuck your mouth?” Joe asked, voice as sweet as his words were filthy. Nicky pulled off just far enough to nod, and then Joe used his grip to pull Nicky back down on his cock.

Time went liquid, then, as Joe pulled his hair and fucked his dick through Nicky’s lips and against the back of his throat again and again.

“So good for me,” Joe groaned, and Nicky squirmed.

“You’re making me feel so good,” Joe told him, and Nicky had to press his palm against his erection.

“Fuck, Nicky, you’re so beautiful, you’re the best thing I’ve ever seen, can’t believe you’d let me do this to you,” Joe rambled, and Nicky redoubled his efforts, tongue drawing clumsy patterns against the underside of Joe’s cock as he swallowed around it again and again.

“You’re going to make me come,” Joe said, “I’m so close, let me—”

Nicky grabbed at Joe’s hips when he tried to pull out, keeping him firmly in his mouth as he licked and laved at every part of Joe’s cock he could reach, until it pulsed, warm and bitter into his mouth. 

Above him, Joe was quiet, but when Nicky craned his neck to look up while keeping his mouth firmly around the still-spurting head of his dick, Joe was looking down at him with his eyes wide and his mouth open, gasping.

“Nicky,” he said, when Nicky finally pulled off. “Nicky, come here.”

“Don’t make me stand up,” Nicky pleaded. He was dizzy just kneeling there.

Joe slid down the counter to sit beside him, to grab the lapels of the jacket he was still, strangely, wearing and kiss his swollen, tender lips.

“You taste like me,” Joe mumbled. “How is that so hot.”

Nicky buried his face in Joe’s shoulder. He had been ready – more than ready – to have sex with Joe, but the reality of how much he felt, now that it was happening, was overwhelming. He wanted to secrete away part of his brain, to protect himself, to keep himself apart from what was happening, but it was as if his consciousness had gone offline and all he had left was raw nerves.

“Are you alright?” Joe asked. “That was intense.”

“It was perfect,” Nicky said, muffled into Joe’s shirt. “It made me so hard.”

He dragged Joe’s hand to rest against his erection, unmistakable through the fly of the tan pants he wanted to rip off of his skin.

“Can I make you feel good?” Joe asked.

“You already have,” Nicky said helplessly. “So good.”

“I can make it better,” Joe said, and his fingers were clumsy, but in seconds, he had undone Nicky’s fly and reached into his boxer shorts to run his knuckles gently down the sensitive skin of his dick.

The sound Nicky made was not one he had ever heard from his own throat before. 

“Let me take care of you,” Joe said, laying Nicky gently back against the tiles of the floor. “Let me make you come.”

It wouldn’t take much, Nicky wanted to tell him, but then Joe was already bending down to mouth at the tip of his cock and all ability for rational speech left him.

Joe’s fist was tight around the base, stroking in quick little movements, as his tongue laved circles around the head, over and over until Nicky groaned, hips straining upward. 

“More?” Joe asked. “Or less?”

“More,” Nicky begged. “More, please, more.”

Joe’s lips wrapped tight around the head of his cock, sucking gently but firmly, and his hand kept pace around the rest of it, and Nicky was coming and coming and coming, sweetness clenching through his abdomen, his thighs, his balls until he felt tears leak out his eyes.

“Fuck,” he groaned, head lolling back against the kitchen floor to stare at the ceiling.

Joe laughed.

There was a rustle of cloth, and then Joe was lying beside him.

“Wow,” he said.

Nicky looked over at him. “Did you enjoy that?”

“I don’t think my legs work anymore.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Nicky said. “I thought I would be more suave about it.”

“If you had been any more seductive, I might be dead now,” Joe said seriously. “It would have been a very embarrassing headstone. I will thank you to not try and outdo yourself.”

Nicky laughed, leaning in until their heads were touching, nestled together on the kitchen floor.

“You liked it when I told you how good you were,” Joe observed.

Nicky’s entire body flushed.

“It’s alright,” Joe said. “I liked it, too. A lot.”

“I like other things, too,” Nicky said weakly. “I think. It’s been a while.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Nicky stretched out his fingers, reaching for Joe. With their hands tangled together, they caught their breath for a while longer.

“I think maybe we should take a shower,” Joe said. “You haven’t even seen the bathroom yet, it’s lovely.”

Nicky groaned.

When he finally got to his feet, his knees were red and aching from the floor. Joe hissed. “You’ll have to let me take care of that,” he said. “Maybe a bath instead of a shower.”

By the time they finally got to the risotto, it was cold and congealed. They ate it straight from the pot, feeding each other spoonfuls, entirely unable to stop smiling at each other.

It was delicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: chapter contains explicit sexual content, oral sex and undernegotiated sex.
> 
> Look, this was bound to end in kitchen sex, what can I tell you? This chapter contains some of my favorite stuff, incl. Enzo, who I really enjoy. Hope you like it!


	8. prosciutto

The wake is held in what might be the only restaurant in town besides the Subway barely clinging to existence in the train station. The restaurant is exactly what Joe pictures when he pictures Italian restaurants: low ceilings, cosy lighting, unnecessary pillars and far too many tablecloths on each table. 

Several women about the age of Nicky’s mother are flitting around and setting tables absolutely groaning with food. Joe spots Lucia’s cinnamon rolls smack in the center of the dessert table.

“You, make yourselves useful,” one of the ladies says to him and Nicky as soon as they enter the building, and when possible, Joe does choose the path of least resistance. Nicky seems to be beyond wanting to talk to anyone at this point.

Joe ends up carrying so many plates of cold cuts and antipasti he thinks that, in sum, he removes an entire pig from the kitchen and sets it out artfully in the dining room.

“Susanna, he’s a guest,” Lucia hisses at the woman who shanghaied Joe into helping as soon as she spots him.

“Nonsense,” Susanna says. “He’s your son-in-law, he’ll do the work.”

Fantastic, word has gotten around.

Fucking Instagram, of all things.

That doesn’t entirely explain why Nicky is arrested in the kitchen, mixing vinaigrette. His cooking skills must have also made the rounds. Maybe Matteo Pugliese had bugged the house. Joe has been a teacher long enough to know that sixteen-year-olds are capable of anything.

“It’s fine,” Joe says.

“Besides, he’s earned himself at least a whole plate of that.” She gestures at the pink and white mass of ham Joe is currently holding.

“Oh, I don’t eat meat,” Joe says, heading off to set down the plate.

When he returns, they’re both exactly where he left them, staring at him.

“You don’t eat meat,” Susanna repeats slowly.

“No,” Joe agrees. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“What about chicken?” She asks, sounding a little desperate. “I’m sure we have some chicken, somewhere.”

“Not chicken, either,” Joe says.

“It’s alright,” Lucia says. “There’s always the shrimp.”

Nicky appears in the doorway, drying his hands off on a kitchen towel. “Anything else?” He asks, as if it is normal to be asked to make last-minute salad dressing for your father’s funeral.

Lucia and Susanna round on him. “Your husband eats shrimp, right?” Lucia asks.

“No,” Nicky says, saving Joe the trouble.

“Well, what does he eat?” Susanna asks, perturbed.

“Vegetables,” Nicky says. “Starch. Eggs. Cheese. Fruit.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty here,” Joe says, thinking privately that he’ll probably have to go around stealing the garnishes off the platters.

Lucia purses her lips. “Here I thought you were such a good cook. Could you not convince him of the value of a good cut of meat?”

Nicky purses his lips right back. “I never learned to cook meat,” he admits. “Only things that Joe could eat.”

He might as well have said, _I only learned to cook for Joe_. 

Joe’s heart beats a little faster.

The restaurant fills up fast, possibly with more people than were even in the church. Before too long, Joe finds himself haunting the buffet tables, munching on olives and sundried tomatoes and mozzarella in pesto. Nicky is blocked off by a wall of his mother’s friends, intently discussing vegetarian cookery with Nicky and pointedly not mentioning the dead man that brought them all together or the fact that Nicky has been gone for eight years and returned married to a male, vegetarian Muslim.

Joe supposes that is what passes for tact, here.

Enzo catches him just as he’s setting a slice of ciabatta with arugula and parmesan to his lips. “Over there,” he hisses, pointing towards a group of gangly teenagers, slightly larger than the group in the church, standing in the corner and playing on their phones. “That’s Matteo.”

“Right,” Joe says, steeling himself and swallowing his bite of bread.

Best Nicky never finds out about this.

Joe is all set to yell at the kid for a solid five minutes about privacy and respect and data security, but when he catches sight of him, he softens.

The boy is wearing a suit that’s too short at the wrists and ankles, his ear is pierced but he’s not wearing anything in it, and in the half a minute Joe’s been watching, he’s reached for his hair three times and then stopped himself from messing it up just in time.

Nicky walked so this asshole could run.

“Matteo Pugliese?” He asks the group of teenagers at large, and they all look guiltily towards the kid Joe had pinpointed.

“Come on,” Joe says. “We’re going for a walk.”

It’s the hottest part of the afternoon, and even though it’s October, Joe wants to take off his suit jacket. He doesn’t, because he’s pretty sure the sweat stains under his arms would lessen the impact of his lecture. He waits a good couple of minutes, until they’re far enough from the wake for Matteo to have gotten properly nervous.

“I understand, you know,” Joe says in his mildest teacher voice. 

Matteo looks over at him in surprise.

“You live in a place like this, it’s not easy. You get your ear pierced to show who you are, and your mother makes you take it out for special occasions.”

Matteo fingers at his ear.

“You cling to anyone who might be like you. Finding out that someone got out of here, that someone left and fell in love and made a happy life outside of this town, that’s something special to you.”

“Yeah,” Matteo says quietly.

“But, kid, you’ve got to understand, we’re people.” Joe looks at him, then, the awkwardly long limbs, the coltish skinniness, the tiredness under his eyes. “Nicky’s family didn’t know about me when you put that first picture online, and that’s a terrible way for them to find out. _We_ didn’t know everyone around here was talking about us like this. This morning – that’s another person’s grief, and you just put it online. Everyone can see it. Nicky,” Joe swallows. “Nicky’s a private person. If he knew about the picture from this morning, it would kill him. I’m going to ask you nicely to take the photos of us down, please. Give me that peace of mind.”

“Yeah,” Matteo says again, and fumbles his phone as he pulls it out of his pocket. Joe watches as he deletes the two pictures from this morning, sighing a little as he does it. His thumb lingers a little too long over the third picture, hesitating.

“Matteo,” Joe says warningly.

“I’ll take it down,” Matteo says. “In a second. Can I just show you something first?”

He turns his phone around and hands it to Joe before Joe can answer. Someone named Giorgio has posted three crying emojis with the comment _what a legend_.

“I go to school with Giorgio,” Matteo says. “We never really talked, before I posted that picture, but after, he would stop his friends from teasing me for being gay. Or, here, this one.”

He shows Joe a comment from an Alessandro Lombardi, saying, _Nicolo, if you’re reading these comments, I’d love to get back in touch_.

“See, even other people from the town are on his side, now,” Matteo says.

Joe suppresses a laugh. He may have been flying very blind on local politics for the last few days, but he knows exactly who Alessandro Lombardi is, and also what skills Nicky honed with his help in the church vestry after Sunday mass. He’s pretty sure Alessandro wasn’t looking to get in touch so much as to rekindle an affair.

Matteo shows him a final message. 

It’s from a user named _enzodabenzo_ , which is very lame. The comment reads, _matteo, not cool. nicky deserves privacy._

“See?” Matteo says. “Even Nicky’s family is on your side, now. I just, uh, thought you should see that.” 

Interesting, that Enzo is on Nicky’s side despite Nicky’s apparent disdain. More interesting that Enzo counts as Nicky’s family.

“Thank you for showing me,” Joe says, as kindly as he is able. “I’d still like you to take the photo down.”

Matteo sighs and deletes the photo, then shows Joe he’s done as much

“Thank you,” Joe says. And then, when they’re almost back at the restaurant, just to mess with the kid, “if you do it again, I won’t ask as nicely.”

-

Pizza was a very tricky dish for a multitude of reasons.

The first was that Nicky had had no opportunity to practice; he was flying blind (if, by flying blind, he meant “using well-rated recipes from the internet and twenty-three years of experience eating pizza”).

The second was that Joe was watching his every move and it made Nicky unreasonably nervous.

Shopping was bad enough; the Tesco’s two streets away from Joe’s flat was laid out just differently enough from the one where Nicky lived that he couldn’t find any ingredients and kept having to double back through the store when he forgot things. He had a minor moral crisis, standing in front of the cheese.

“Do you think Andy and Quynh will mind if we cheat and use normal mozzarella instead of the good kind?” 

Joe laughed. “I think Andy and Quynh haven’t eaten anything home-cooked in the last three weeks,” he said. “I doubt they’d notice.”

“Alright,” Nicky decided. “Then we are going to cut a corner.” Mozzarella di bufala had no business being so expensive.

He’d also never worked with yeast before. He knew his mother spent a long time in the kitchen, when she was making dough, but that could just as well have been to get time alone. He figured his best bet was to follow the recipe to the letter and hope for the best.

He was pleasantly surprised when the yeast bubbled.

He wasn’t really sure how to attack kneading a dough, but with Joe’s eyes on him, he rolled his sleeves up and just started, heedless of his own cluelessness. Kneading his dough for ten full minutes seemed unnecessary, but given that he’d thought the same thing about stirring béchamel sauce, he was willing to be proven wrong. In fact, the only real hindrance in the recipe was the instruction to “place the dough in a deep greased container”. Nicky had no real idea what that was supposed to mean, and Joe didn’t have a second bowl to put the dough into, so he just asked Joe to pour the olive oil into his hands and then did his best to surround the entire ball of dough with oil.

Nicky was washing up under slightly-too-hot water, trying to get all the flecks of dried dough on his wrists and forearms off, when he became aware of Joe’s eyes on him.

“What is it?” He asked, convinced Joe had figured him out and was about to ask whether he’d ever even cooked before, to which Nicky would have to answer ‘no’ and then confess how desperate he had been to make Joe happy. Still was, in fact.

Joe cleared his throat.

“Are you done?” He asked.

“Oh,” Nicky said, shutting off the tap and drying off his hands and forearms. “Sorry.”

Joe made a noise that was more of a growl and pushed into Nicky’s space.

“This was a mistake,” he groaned between hungry kisses.

“Hm?” Nicky mumbled against his lips, worried, but not worried enough to stop kissing him.

“How am I supposed,” Joe began, then got distracted kissing a line down Nicky’s neck, “to just _watch_ you cook in my kitchen? Have you _seen_ yourself? Your arms, Nicky.”

“My arms?” Nicky repeated, confused.

Joe pulled away long enough to look at him with fever-bright eyes. “I want,” he said, “to lick your forearms. You have no idea, do you?”

Nicky really didn’t have any idea, but he did know what it was to want Joe to distraction. “It was your idea to invite them over tonight,” he pointed out. “We could have just…been alone.”

Joe groaned and redoubled his attack on Nicky’s sanity.

“It was a stupid idea,” he panted, as Nicky finally got the upper hand, gripping the curls at the base of Joe’s head to hold him steady while Nicky sucked kisses down the line of his neck.

“Yes,” Nicky agreed. “Because now I have to cook when I could just have more of you instead.”

He wasn’t sure where the words came from, but saying them out loud felt strangely daring in the light of day, with the oven fan whirring in the background and the dirty dishes standing by the sink. This man, this gorgeous man standing there before him, would tell him now how much he wanted Nicky, and then sit down to dinner with their friends in a few hours, openly, as a couple.

The thought was so intoxicating that Nicky couldn’t quite stop himself.

Not that Joe was interested in stopping him, either – quite the reverse, if the urgency with which he reached down to help Nicky undo the button and zip on his trousers was anything to go by.

“Nicky,” Joe gasped as Nicky took him in hand in began to stroke, leisurely, unhurried, as if they weren’t having a quickie in the kitchen an hour and half – fuck, only an hour and half – before their friends were due to arrive.

Joe was slower – sloppier – unconcentrated enough to make Nicky just a little proud of himself – as he opened Nicky’s pants as well, but with Nicky unwilling to let go of his cock, he couldn’t quite get an angle to stroke Nicky in turn. Anyway, Joe seemed a little too out of it, staring unabashedly at the flex and pull of Nicky’s arms as he stroked Joe off. 

“Fuck,” he moaned. “If we had lube you could fuck my thighs, Nicky, get yourself off while you drive me insane, Nicky, Nicky…”

He trailed off into other, less coherent sounds, but the idea took root in Nicky’s brain so firmly he had to do it. He pushed Joe towards the opposite counter slowly, hand not leaving its work, and spun him around with a hint of pressure on his shoulders. Hands now momentarily free, he reached for the olive oil and slathered his hands in it again before settling one arm around Joe’s waist to touch him again and the other around his own cock.

Overcome for a moment, he had to press his forehead into Joe’s shoulder and groan.

Joe leaned forward over the counter, until his ass was pressed flush against Nicky.

“Please,” he said.

Nicky was fairly certain he’d had this dream before.

Nicky’s hands were slippery with oil, but he had enough of a grip to hold Joe’s hip steady as he sank into the warm space between Joe’s thighs, oil dripping onto the floor between them. 

“Santa Maria,” he panted on the first thrust. The heat of it, the way the friction of Joe’s thighs pulled his foreskin back just enough to rub tantalizingly against the head, it was enough to make his head spin.

Determined not to be as selfish as he had been last night, when he’d swallowed Joe down mostly to please himself without talking about it first, he tightened his hand on Joe’s cock, stroking with intent.

Joe shuddered beneath him.

“Nicky,” he gasped, “Nicky, God, I wish you were in me, all the way, fuck you feel so good.”

“I’ve never done that,” Nicky admitted, too high on hormones to care if that was something he should have kept to himself.

Joe groaned, his cock twitching in Nicky’s grip, slick beads of precome joining drooling out the tip. “I could be your first,” he said. “Could teach you to fuck me just how I like it.”

Nicky could feel the weight of that thought in his _knees_. “If it’s anything as good as this, you’ll be my only,” he ground out, and then bit into Joe’s shoulder to stop himself from saying anything else stupid.

It didn’t seem to matter – Joe was already coming, heavy spurts across the top of Nicky’s fist, legs clenching tight around Nicky and dragging the orgasm out of him so intensely it was almost unpleasant, how much Nicky felt.

“Well,” Joe said hoarsely a few minutes later, sitting next to Nicky on the kitchen floor. “I did already ask you to marry me, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the subtitle for this fic should just be "tonal whiplash and food porn"
> 
> or possibly "kitchen sex: it was so nice, they did it twice"


	9. focaccia

“So,” Nicky says, with the sun setting somewhere to the west of the living room, sitting ramrod straight on the dining room chair he had turned around to face the couch when they got back from the wake a half hour ago. “He’s still your boyfriend.”

“Yes,” Elena says.

“You have a child with him and he didn’t marry you.”

“I asked!” Enzo defends himself, but Nicky ignores him.

“Why would you do this, Elena?”

“You sound just like Papa,” Elena says, and they are all silent for a long moment.

After a while of picking at a loose thread at the hem of her dress, Elena says, “I read your letter. You were right about the Church, and I won’t let them marry me.”

Nicky swallows heavily and doesn’t answer.

“Maybe, now, a civil ceremony. I didn’t want to break Papa’s heart.”

“But your mother’s heart is fine to break,” Lucia says, groping for one of the many lace-edged tissues she had been gifted with by friends and relatives at the funeral.

“No – Mamma, that’s not what I—”

Lucia is already up and out the door, mumbling that it’s fine, that she will make dinner now, even though it’s barely seven PM and they’ve been eating all afternoon. Elena follows hot on her heels, leaving her child curled up against his father in sleep.

“Ah, Nicolino,” Enzo sighs, pressing a kiss against his head. “She said it. Someday she’ll marry me.”

“You should have talked her into it,” Nicky says, the first time he directly speaks to Enzo.

“I don’t talk Elena into anything, you know that.”

Nicky frowns.

Joe looks between them, more confused than ever.

Catching his expression, Enzo heaves a great sigh of disappointment. “You see, Yusuf, Nicolò never thought I was good enough for his sister.”

“You aren’t,” Nicky says.

Joe looks over to him quizzically. As far as heterosexual white men go, Enzo hasn’t done or said anything particularly objectionable yet.

“He’s a Juventus fan, Joe,” Nicky says, as if this fact holds the weight of centuries of disappointment.

They have only just returned from the funeral. Nicky’s eyes are still puffy from this morning, his face is still much too pale and he hasn’t loosened his tie at all even though it must be strangling him, and Joe wants to hold him in his arms and make this better somehow. It is absolutely the wrong moment for Joe to burst out laughing, but he can’t help himself. Perhaps he needs a good cry almost as much as Nicky did, because his laughter turns jagged and ugly in moments.

“I thought it was serious,” he gets out between gasps for air. “Santa Maria, Nicky, football? I thought it was—”

“It is serious,” Nicky says indignantly, even though there is a ghost of a smile playing around his lips. “Only people of weak character support Juventus.”

“Oh?” Enzo says, equally riled. “And who does your precious husband support, hm?”

“Joe supports whichever team is more likely to lose,” Nicky tells him. “It is a stupid stance for a football fan, but at least it is moral.”

“Hey!” Joe says. “That’s not true. If America were playing Bayern-München, I would support Bayern-München. The Americans don’t deserve to win no matter how bad their odds are.”

Enzo throws his hands up. “That’s ridiculous! In what competition would the United States be playing against a German national league team?”

“It was a hypothetical!” Joe says. “I hate Bayern-München.”

“At least that we can all agree on,” Nicky says. “Unless Enzo has become such a fan of success he has fallen for Manuel Neuer.”

Enzo’s face immediately betrays his guilt.

“Weak character,” Nicky says, pointing a judgmental finger at Enzo.

“Italians invented the libero!” Enzo defends. “He is basically an Italian!”

“No, I am done speaking to you,” Nicky says. “I thought Elena had better judgment.”

“I can’t believe she named my son after you,” Enzo mutters, stroking Nicolino’s hair in apology. 

They fall silent for long moments, interrupted only by the occasional chuckles Joe can’t quite repress.

Lucia is still angry when she and Elena return from the kitchen.

Joe can feel it in every weighted stare passed between the five of them as they pretend to be interested in eating antipasti and focaccia left over from the wake.

It’s terrible.

“I suppose you two were also not married in a church,” Lucia says at last, staring directly at Nicky.

“I believe you will find a shortage of Catholics willing to perform the ceremony,” Nicky says, crisp and sardonic and brutal.

“And what about you?” She asks Joe. “You are fine with this godless marriage?”

Joe shrugs. “If there were a mosque in Europe that would perform the ceremony and not ask Nicky to convert, perhaps we could go there. So far, there has been none.”

She scoffs.

Joe’s patience wears thin. 

“I know you would prefer I were not here,” he says, “but I will not do you the disrespect of pretending I’m something I’m not. I am not a Catholic, and Nicky knew this when he married me.”

“Is it a real marriage, if you only swear it in front of a state who will divorce you two days later if you ask nicely?” Lucia challenges. 

Joe’s patience snaps.

“I know what I am to Nicky, and I know what he is to me,” he says. “When I was young, I never thought I would get to marry the man I loved at all, and to have a state – any state – sanction it in front of my family and my loved ones is more than I could have dreamed, even if my beloved’s family were not there.” The last he says pointedly, to her. But he’s not done, he refuses to be done. “And furthermore, even if it were still illegal in all one hundred and ninety-six countries, I would know what we are to each other. He is the only man for me for the rest of my life, and I do not appreciate being questioned.”

In the ensuing stillness, Elena asks, “There are one hundred and ninety-six countries? I thought it was less.”

“Serbia and Montenegro split,” Enzo reminds her. “And South Sudan is a country now.”

“Right,” she says. “Impressive.”

“Eh,” Nicky says. “Joe used to play this quiz – name all the countries of the world in twelve minutes – when he was anxious during University. He got very good at it.”

“I would have been there to see my son married,” Lucia says grandly. “If I had been invited.”

Nicky, who Joe had thought was taking this with the equanimity he often gave Joe’s more dramatic moments, is on his feet in a moment, swearing to a cacophony of saints all at once. “In eight years,” he hisses out at the tail end of his curses, “you never wrote to me once. You never called. I sent you a card every time I moved. I left you a message every time I changed my phone number, and you never used it. How was I to know you’d want to be at my wedding? I assumed I would never see or hear from you again.”

Lucia stands up and leaves the room.

Nicky stalks off to the garden.

Joe falls heavily back into his chair and burrows his head in his hands.

“I think it’s time for limoncello,” Elena says eventually, and the clink of glasses alerts Joe to a shot glass being set in front of him.

“I don’t drink,” he says.

“Seriously?” Enzo asks. “How?”

“It’s haram.”

“So you just…don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Not even on weekends?”

Joe lifts his head out of his hands and gives Enzo a look. “No, Enzo, not even on weekends.” He’s starting to see why Nicky hates this guy.

Enzo shrugs. “Nicolò,” he calls to Nicky. “Your husband won’t drink, you have to.”

Nicky appears in the screen door again, shoulders broad and back ramrod straight. “You offered him alcohol? Seriously?”

Enzo shrugs. “What do I know about Muslims?”

“Nothing, clearly,” Nicky says, sitting beside Joe and taking the glass.

Joe follows it with his eyes longingly.

“Maybe it’s time I stopped keeping halal quite so strictly,” he says, almost the instant the thought crosses his mind, and then regrets it a little. They’ll try to talk him around on pork next, he just knows it.

Nicky almost drops his glass. “Joe, no!”

“Why not? I almost never go to any sort of religious service, anyway. And I don’t pray five times a day. What would a glass of wine every now and then matter?”

Nicky mutters something so quiet none of them catch it.

“What was that?” Joe asks.

“I _said_ , I went to so much trouble getting the risotto just right for you without alcohol, and now you give it all up.”

A bubble bursts, somewhere in Joe’s stomach, a knot of tension, just at that, at the reminder of their shared past, spanning a quarter of his life now. He laughs. “Apparently, my heart,” he says, “you learned to cook _everything_ just for me.”

Nicky blushes bright red.

“Did you think you were going to get by without me noticing that?” Joe teases. “Apparently you couldn’t boil an egg when you left home, and there you went, making me homemade gnocchi.”

“You never asked when I learned to cook,” Nicky says, not meeting his eyes. “It’s not my fault you assumed.”

“I wish I had known 

“You know,” Elena says. “You’ll have to make these fabled gnocchi for us someday, if they are good enough to make a man propose. I’ll need practice.” She winks at Enzo.

“Never make risotto with anyone else,” Joe says in an undertone.

He takes the fourth shot glass Enzo offers with a raised eyebrow, and the four of them toast.

-

Dinner with Andy and Quynh was excruciating.

Not because of the pizza. The pizza turned out surprisingly well, if Nicky did say so himself. The crust was thin and crispy with delightful air pockets here and there and he stopped Joe from spreading the tomato sauce too thick in the nick of time. They ate the pizza in rounds, getting fresh slices straight from the oven, so the cheese was melting off the sides in delicious strings.

Nicky was pretty proud of the pizza. 

He was less proud of the way his eyes tracked Joe’s mouth as he licked excess sauce off his fingers, of the way their feet tangled together under the table, of how deliberately he rolled his sleeves up, knowing now what it did to Joe.

He wasn’t not proud of any of those things, but they did have company.

No, dinner was excruciating because Nicky had the clear sense that Quynh did not want to be there despite it being her idea in the first place.

They lasted through a round of scrabble after dinner, before Quynh complained that she felt old and wanted to go out and get drunk like the students they were.

Nicky frowned in consternation. It seemed very impolite towards Joe.

Joe shrugged. “You know I can’t drink,” he said.

Quynh rolled her eyes, about to respond mockingly, Nicky could just tell by the smirk around the side of her mouth. His frown deepened.

“What, Nicky?” She asked.

“I didn’t think you would take someone’s religious practices so lightly,” he said.

She gave him a quizzical look.

When he didn’t elaborate, she shook her head. “You know I don’t take religious practices lightly,” she said. “Or I would have chosen an easy subject for my Ph.D. Nuclear physics, maybe. I’m just not ready to be old and boring.”

Joe looked over at Nicky out of the corner of his eye. “I am very ready to be old and boring,” he said.

Nicky wasn’t sure, but he thought Andy gave their after-dinner coffee cups a wistful look as she and Quynh headed out the door for adventure.

They cleaned up side by side in Joe’s kitchen, Joe washing and Nicky drying, wiping down the counters and bumping each other’s hips and elbows almost on accident but not quite. There was a contentment thrumming in Nicky’s veins, a sense of belonging he hadn’t felt since he was too young to feel out of place.

“Do you think Quynh is alright?” He asked, settling the dry plates on top of the plate stack.

Joe sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Quynh has a hard time with things like this.” He gestured around the kitchen with a sudsy hand.

“Cooking?”

“Domesticity. Intimacy. It took months of hooking up with Andy before she agreed to be exclusive, you know.”

Nicky made a considering noise.

“You don’t—” Joe looked over at him. “That’s not a conversation we’ve had. Exclusivity. Do we need to?”

Nicky swallowed. “I meant it when I said I wanted you to be my only.”

“Good,” Joe said, voice like gravel.

Nicky drew in a deep breath. 

“Anyway,” Joe said, returning to the washing-up. “Quynh…she’ll have told you about her background.”

She had, over gin and tonics after grading papers, when Nicky had already spilled his whole life story to her. It had been the first night in England Nicky had been absolutely sure he made the right choice.

“Sometimes I think she decided she would do everything she could to be the opposite of what her parents would have chosen for her,” Joe said. He pulled the plug, letting the water out as he handed Nicky the now-clean pan they had made tomato sauce in. “Sometimes I think she denies herself the things she wants if they’re too much like what she ran from.”

“You’re a good friend,” Nicky said.

“I’m really not,” Joe said, bracketing Nicky’s hips with his still-damp hands. “I’m really not, because you’re right, Quynh and Andy are headed for another one of their legendary fights and I should have gone out with them and kept them from it but instead I stayed right here, hoping I could talk you into fucking me into the mattress.”

Nicky’s throat was suddenly parched. It clicked as he swallowed around nothing. “We could call them tomorrow,” he said. 

“Good idea,” Joe told him. His eyes were hooded, the flush of his eyelashes against his cheek beautiful.

“You really don’t have to talk me into that,” Nicky said. 

“No?”

“No.”

He kissed Joe to seal the deal, open and wet and hungry, only pulling away in the interest of actually making it to a bed this time.

“Okay,” Joe said. “Okay, here is what will happen. I need to go the bathroom and wash up, before we do this. You are going to take off all your clothes and get into bed.”

“Bossy,” Nicky said, eyebrows raised.

“Just wait,” Joe laughed breathlessly. “If it’s anything like what I think it will be like, you’ll have me at your mercy in no time.”

Nicky liked the sound of that a lot more than he wanted to admit.

He was at loose ends while Joe was in the bathroom. This was the first moment he was truly flying blind, sexually speaking. The closest he’d come was Alessandro Lombardi’s fingers slipping clumsily between the cheeks of his ass while he gave Nicky a blowjob. Neither of them had dared go further.

He had googled, several times, over the last few weeks, how this particular operation worked. He knew what Joe was doing in the bathroom; he had tried it himself, in his own, far more cramped shower, using the detachable head to scour the rim and the inside of his ass. It had felt very strange, leaving him feeling like his bowels were twitching and watery, and the attempt he’d made afterwards at fingering himself had been little better. Then, his wrist cramped up and he’d had to stop. 

Joe seemed to be more experienced in this.

In the absence of anything better to do, Nicky washed his hands thoroughly, and with some trepidation, stripped off his clothes and laid down on the bed. He was acutely aware that, while they had had sex twice, they had yet to see each other naked.

Joe seemed to have no such concerns, when he followed Nicky into the bedroom what felt like an eternity later. He had a towel clutched in one hand, but otherwise, he was breathtakingly naked. 

There was a certain absurdity to naked bodies, Nicky thought a little hysterically. Beauty, of course, how could there not be beauty in such vulnerability, but absurdity all the same. There was still water from the shower clinging to Joe’s skin, matting down the hair on his chest and back. Nicky had never been able to just – look at another human like this, to see the slight swell of his belly after a nice dinner; his penis hanging freely between his thighs, a little plump but not hard. A constellation of freckles on his thigh peeked through the hair on his legs, thinner higher up and darker and thicker further down. His feet were paler than the rest of his skin, and where Nicky had found Joe’s long fingers graceful and arresting from the moment they met, his toes were knobbly and awkward.

Nicky didn’t need to look down at himself to know that he looked similar, that the hair dusting his body was lighter, that his feet looked strange uncovered, that his penis was equally ridiculous outside of the context of sex. It was bizarre, how intimate it felt to see each other like this, before desire overwhelmed sanity.

“You alright in there?” Joe asked kindly, sliding up next to Nicky at the head of the bed.

“Of course,” Nicky said. “I just…realized I’ve never been naked with another person before.”

“Thank you for trusting me, then,” Joe said, and kissed him.

Kissing clarified quite a few things. Kissing, Nicky knew; kissing, they had been doing for weeks and kissing reminded Nicky how desperately he had been wanting this, Joe, warm and bare against him

Joe’s thigh slotted between his own, and that was different, too, the rasp of skin on skin, the pressure of Joe so close to where Nicky wanted him, nothing but air between them. Nicky’s hands trailed across Joe’s skin, and what had been absurd became logical, so clear, that this was what they had been building towards with every whispered touch, every heated encounter. Without having so much as thought about it, Nicky found he had one hand clenched tight in Joe’s curls, keeping his head at just the right angle to kiss, and the other sliding down the sleek lines of Joe’s back to cup his ass firmly.

There was a pleased noise on Joe’s lips that got lost somewhere in Nicky’s mouth.

Joe wasn’t idle, himself. He reached between them, as well, and Nicky gasped as his fist wrapped itself loosely around Nicky’s half-hard cock. He’d been too out of his mind to really enjoy Joe’s touch the first time around. Now, he could feel every bit of it. Joe’s hand was soft, his grip lax, teasing. Pencil callouses on the tips of his fingers dragged against the loose skin of Nicky’s cock until he was fully hard, until skin that had been loose had tightened with blood, until the head of his cock pushed insistently through his foreskin. The swipe of Joe’s thumb against that exposed bit of nerve caused a full-body shiver.

“Right,” Joe said hoarsely. “Right, I think we should move on to the next part.”

“The next part,” Nicky repeated.

“Yeah,” Joe said, scrabbling on the night table for lube and condoms. “We should have used these yesterday, really, but, uh, anyway…”

“Quynh made me go to the clinic with her, once,” Nicky said. “I’m clean.” He didn’t add that he’d never heard of anyone using condoms for oral. It sounded awful, but he was very aware that his education had been severely lacking when it came to safe sex, or sex in general.

“So am I,” Joe said. “We’re still using condoms. For this.”

“Okay,” Nicky said. “You know what you’re doing. I’m in your hands.”

Joe smirked.

“I can do this next part,” he offered, expression turning serious again. “I know it’s – a lot, and very, uh, intimate, to be this up close and personal with someone else’s anus. And if it’s not something you don’t want, we don’t have to—”

It dawned on Nicky that Joe was nervous.

“Joe,” he said, with as much patience as he could muster. “I want very, very much to fuck you. Ideally, I want you to fuck me as well at some point. I am more than willing to be ‘up close and personal’ with all of your body, but only if you want me to be.”

“I do,” Joe rested his head against Nicky’s. “I really, really do. It’s just a little nerve-wracking, this part, you know? What if I didn’t clean up well enough, what if something weird happens…”

“Then we will be forced to shower together again,” Nicky said solemnly. “A terrible fate.”

Joe’s smile was as bright as the sun. “I really don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said.

Nicky wanted to respond, but Joe had already pressed the lube into his hand and spread his legs, and it did not seem like a time for words. 

“Have you done this part before?” Joe asked as Nicky settled between his legs.

“I tried on myself,” Nicky said. “It didn’t work very well.”

“Right,” Joe sighed. “That’s a visual. Start with your index finger.”

It was still, between them, in the moments that followed, Nicky concentrated on his hands, one wet with lube and the other steadying himself on the bed as he hovered over Joe’s splayed-wide legs, slowly and gently feeling out the right space to push the tip on his index finger into Joe’s body. He settled back on his knees once he’d found it and was struck at once by the visual of Joe, lying on his back on the bed, legs spread, arms over his head, tight muscle in his arms corded, lips slightly open.

“You’re so beautiful,” Nicky whispered, and remembered how absurd their nakedness had seemed to him only moments ago. He had been an idiot. 

Joe squirmed under his appraisal, but his smile was no less luminous than it had been, before.

With renewed concentration, Nicky slid his finger deeper, spreading the lube, crooking his finger towards himself and straightening it again.

“You can add another,” Joe said.

Nicky frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Mm,” Joe sighed, stretching. “Very sure.”

Nicky was skeptical, it seemed to him that Joe was so tight he would be hurt, but he trusted Joe, so he withdrew his index finger and pressed it in again with his middle finger beside it. “You’re sure I’m not hurting you?” He asked, concerned at the line furrowing down Joe’s brow.

“You’re stretching me,” Joe said, except it came out more like a groan. “It pulls a little. It’s been a while.”

Nicky was entirely prepared to pull his fingers out entirely, but Joe’s thighs clenched tight around his arm. 

“Don’t you dare stop,” Joe said. “I want you so much, Nicky.”

“You’ll tell me if it’s too much?” Nicky asked.

Joe’s eyes blinked open and he smiled at Nicky hazily. “Of course,” he said. “And you will do the same.”

At Nicky’s nod, his smile widened. “Good,” he said. “Now crook your fingers like you did before, like – ah, like that, yes, love, that’s good.”

In increments, he loosened, strong thighs shaking with it as Nicky fucked him on two and then three fingers, slowly at first and then quicker, rougher. His cock was rosy and plump against his abdomen, and Nicky bent down to lick at it on impulse. 

“Fuck, and you say I’m beautiful,” Joe whispered above him. “God, Nicky, what are you doing to me.”

“I want you to feel good,” Nicky said, breath still hot against Joe’s cock.

Joe moaned shakily. “I think I need you to fuck me now,” he said, and pressed a condom into Nicky’s hand.

Nicky took it in his left hand, but he needed his right to put it on, so he pulled his fingers slowly out of Joe, closing his eyes against the breathy, punched-out moan Joe made as he did. He wiped his hand off against the towel as best as he could, but his hand was still too slippery to work the condom well, and it took him three tries to get it on. It was probably just as well; he had been dangerously hard all through fingering Joe open.

Joe was moving around on the bed while Nicky was focused on the condom. When he’d finally gotten it on, he saw that Joe had positioned the towel under his hips. Clever.

“You’re sure you’re ready?” Nicky asked.

“Nicky,” Joe groaned. “You’re killing me.”

Sliding into Joe was difficult. In part, because he was so tight that Nicky barely fit in, was convinced he wouldn’t for the first part of it, trying to get the head settled within Joe’s hole. Once he had managed that, though, he had to stay still, waiting as Joe panted and adjusted around him. 

“Okay, okay,” Joe panted at about the point Nicky thought he would go insane from the crushing heat surrounding his dick. “You can go deeper, now.” 

Nicky allowed his hips to surge forward gently, pressing himself deeper into Joe, and then deeper still when Joe didn’t stop him again, until his thighs were pressed tight to the curve of Joe’s ass. He stilled, breathing deeply through his nose. He was twenty-three, not sixteen, and he wanted Joe to feel good.

“You can move,” Joe told him, voice gritty.

Nicky moved, slowly and carefully, pulling his hips back and pressing in, relishing the punched-out breaths from Joe with each thrust. “Does it feel good?” He asked.

“Getting better,” Joe said. “Lemme—” He hitched his legs up until they were resting against Nicky’s shoulders.

On the next thrust in, he groaned, deep in his chest. “Oh, fuck, Nicky,” he gasped out as Nicky withdrew again, “just like that. Just give it to me, nice and deep, please.”

Nicky was helpless to do anything but obey.

He pressed a kiss to Joe’s thigh, the dark hair on Joe’s legs rasping against his skin as he pressed himself deeper and deeper. He understood what Joe had meant, about the hair-raising intimacy of this act. It was unmistakable, what part of Joe’s body he had sunk his cock into, and like this, with Joe’s legs hitched so high up, Nicky could see everything, the stretch of Joe’s rim around him, the trickle of lube dripping down onto the towel, the tremble of his thighs, the sweat beading on both their foreheads. It was warm, too warm, and Nicky could smell Joe’s body wash, applied thickly to his skin, but under it, the musky scent of sex, sweat, and Joe. It wasn’t unpleasant – it was exactly what Nicky would have expected if he had thought to waste time thinking about what sex smelled like.

“Can you…” Joe began, shifting. “Faster?”

“You like it hard?” Nicky asked. For future reference.

“Slow to start,” Joe said. “Just like this. Then faster.”

His cheeks were flushed pink, a beautiful contrast to his skin, his hair a mess as he tossed his head back against the pillows as Nicky increased his pace, fucking in harder and faster. He looked like he should be in a painting, he was so gorgeous it almost hurt. Nicky knew his own face must be beet-red with exertion, with pleasure, and he had no idea why someone like Joe wanted this, with him, of all people.

But he did.

Joe was moaning his name, increasingly high-pitched, rocking back into Nicky’s thrusts with what little leverage he had, splayed out for Nicky as he was. Every thrust in punched new noised out of him, and when he clenched down tight on Nicky’s cock every now and again, Nicky couldn’t help swearing into the space between them. 

“I need,” Joe said, “Legs, down, please.”

Nicky pulled back instantly and Joe’s legs slid down till his heels were on the bed, thighs still shaking with the exertion of having been held up for so long, legs still splayed wide around Nicky.

“C’mon, fuck me,” Joe said, seeming to have regained some coherency.

Nicky surged back over him.

Like this, he could kiss Joe as he fucked into him, could feel how the in-drawn breaths Joe sucked in right next to his ear ended in his ass pulsing around Nicky’s cock. Nicky was lucky Joe had insisted on the condom, it at least dulled sensation enough for him to not have embarrassed himself yet. 

“Joe,” he breathed out all the same. His hips and knees ached with strain. His belly was liquid with desire and it was only a matter of time. “Joe, please.” What he was asking Joe for, he wasn’t sure. Permission to come? Confirmation he was getting this right?

“Yeah,” Joe said, “yeah, me too,” and it made no sense, except Nicky knew exactly what Joe meant – that he was close, too, that he just needed that one extra push to take him over the edge.

On instinct, Nicky reared up on his knees, dragging Joe’s hips along to rest on his thighs, so Joe was angled back, so Nicky could really aim for that one place inside him, so Nicky could use his free hand to wrap around Joe’s cock.

“Oh,” Joe cried out as his eyes rolled back. “Oh, Nicky, Nicky, yes, fuck,” and then he was coming in long pulses up his own belly, clenching down around Nicky once more. Nicky managed to press in all the way, to the hilt, before losing himself entirely to the heat and his own orgasm, ripping through him until he was panting, open-mouthed, into Joe’s shoulder and hitching his hips in little circles, working out the aftershocks deep into Joe’s body.

“Too much,” Joe hissed eventually, “too much.”

Nicky withdrew far enough to pull out gently and just dropped where he was, face pressed into Joe’s belly.

“Santa Maria, Madre di Dio,” he mumbled into Joe’s skin eventually, when no other words would cut it. He could feel Joe shake with laughter under him.

“I didn’t have to teach you anything.” Joe’s hand carded through his hair. “Like you were made for me.”

Nicky shivered. _I think I was_ , he wanted to say. _I think all the bullshit in my life was just to get me here, to you._

“We should probably shower before bed,” he said instead, unromantic and practical. 

“Mm,” Joe hummed. “You’ll have to let me up. Mind if I go in alone for a second? I have…” he gestured vaguely downwards, in a way that Nicky took to mean _lube up my ass_.

“Go ahead,” he said, sitting up and pulling the condom off carefully. There was something strange about the time just after orgasm, when Nicky found the thought of his own semen pooling in the base of the condom intensely disgusting even though it never bothered him otherwise.

“Nothing weird?” Joe asked, blushing.

“Nothing weird,” Nicky promised, “and even if there were, it wouldn’t be weird.”

He wondered if there would ever come a time when Joe’s smile didn’t threaten to stop his heart.

They showered quickly, both intent on curling up under the covers and sleeping for hours together. Nicky had guessed, after last night, that orgasms made Joe even more tactile than usual, and he was proven right by the way Joe curled up tight against his skin, hands running along every inch of Nicky’s body, not to arouse but to touch.

He was just drifting off, warm and comfortable and so in love he didn’t have the words to say it, when Andy rang the doorbell, looking for a place to crash since Quynh had kicked her out.

“I knew I should have gone with them,” Joe muttered guiltily to Nicky once Andy had drifted off into an uneasy, anger-and-vodka fueled sleep.

“This happens a lot?”

Joe shrugged. “When things get too serious for Quynh,” he said. “They’ll make up in a few days.”

“Should I go home?” Nicky asked, fully aware that his concept of home had been nonexistent between leaving Liguria and meeting Joe.

Joe smiled at him. “Only if you’re uncomfortable,” he said. 

“Things won’t get too serious for you?” Nicky couldn’t help himself asking.

Joe only laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did Nicky have strong feelings about Juventus fans before his little sister started dating one? I mean, he would say no.
> 
> Did sixteen-year-old Enzo double down on being a Juventus fan because Nicky gave him so much shit for it? _absolutely_
> 
> Does Nicky begrudgingly respect him for that? Again, Nicky would say no.
> 
> A libero, if you've never lived in Europe and been inundated with more football knowledge than you could possibly care about, is a type of goalie who leaves the goal and takes active part in the game sometimes. The word is obvsly Italian. Manuel Neuer is famous for it, both in the German national team and in Bayern-München, which I felt safe referencing given that a) Joe and Nicky currently live in Germany in this fic, and b) if you think fans of success have weak character, you definitely, definitely have a problem with Bayern-München and c) Bayern-München is also regularly in the Champions League and thus well-known in Europe. Also I know nothing about football, I'm sorry I even put this in.
> 
> (on a more serious note, I tried very hard and for a very long time to get this flashback right; something about how different it is when sex is a planned activity, esp. one you're new at, versus hormone-fueled blowjobs in the kitchen, struck me as needing detail and attention)


	10. miso

“She doesn’t really believe half the things she says,” Elena says, after three quarters of the limoncello have been drained. “She means well. She’s just mourning, and it makes her cling to tradition.”

Nicky says nothing so carefully Joe can feel it in his fingernails that Elena just stepped into his anger.

“Really,” she continues, oblivious of her brother’s unnatural stillness. “She isn’t like him, she doesn’t mind that you’re—“

“You should put your son to bed,” Nicky interrupts, tone bland.

“Nicky, seriously!” She says. “Give Mamma a chance—“

“A chance to what?” Nicky asks. “Pretend I don’t exist for another eight years?”

“You know she was just trying to keep the peace with Papa—“

“I know nothing, because I heard nothing,” Nicky tells her. “Not from her and not from you. Why should I believe that it was Papa holding you back? All I know is that none of you cared enough to reach out to me, and that includes you.”

Enzo slides out of his chair noiselessly, grabbing a sleeping Nicolino and leaving the room.

“I didn’t know how to reach you!” Elena cries. “You may have sent Mamma an address, but I only found out two days ago that she’d known where you were all along. They didn’t tell me anything, I only read your letter because I was the first to wake up, after you left.”

“I didn’t know that,” Nicky says. His tone is still too harsh, Joe can tell, because Elena is too like him, her hackles rising.

“You didn’t think,” Elena says. “You didn’t think of anyone but yourself when you left, Nicky, and I know why you did it, but you’re my big brother and I needed you and you were gone.”

“Did you ever even ask Mamma and Papa? For an address?”

“Of course not, it would have only made them cry.”

“Then you don’t get to tell me I thought of no one but myself,” Nicky tells her. “I was miserable here for years, don’t you see that? I would have been miserable for more if I had stayed.”

“I just wish you could have stayed.”

“And I wish you would have told me that sooner. Joe, I’m going to bed.”

Joe’s moving a little slower, a little more liquid than usual, after drinking for the first time in eight-odd years. He gives Elena an apologetic shrug and follows Nicky up the stairs.

For the second time in a day, he finds Nicky crying. “I hate it here,” Nicky says dully. “We should never have come.”

“At least you know your sister missed you?” Joe offers. “And she doesn’t care that you’re gay?”

Nicky snorts. “She’s willing to be an ally to my face. I doubt she really was behind my back.”

“I mean, if she left the Church…” Joe begins awkwardly.

“You don’t leave the Church in this town,” Nicky says. “She’s just put off getting married.”

“Well, alright, that, then. She did that because she loves you.”

“When she can’t see me.”

“Oh, love.” Joe sits on the bed, pulls Nicky down with him until he’s resting his head on Joe’s shoulder. “I’m glad we came here. I feel like I learned so much about you in the last two days. But I’m sorry it hurts you so much.”

“We should go to sleep.”

By mutual, unspoken agreement, they decide to forgo brushing their teeth so as to not have to leave the room again. Instead, they just strip down to their underwear and get under the covers.

“I love you,” Joe says, groping in the dark to find Nicky’s face and give him a kiss.

“I love you too. I can’t believe you started drinking,” Nicky says. “One weekend in Italy was all it took.”

“I have a confession to make,” Joe says.

“Oh?”

“When we met, I was taking antibiotics. I had a tricky gum infection. That’s why I wasn’t drinking. I know I said I kept halal, but, well…” Joe trails off. 

Nicky knows how complicated his relationship with his religion is. He knows that Joe has always and will always believe in a God who forgives, in a God who doesn’t make people by mistake, but at the same time, Joe has told him many stories about how strange it had been, as a child, to move from Tunisia first to the Netherlands and then to France and to have his family’s beliefs and practices called into question by his friends and teachers over and over again, to live in a system that, by its very structure, made it nearly impossible to keep up with some of the demands of his faith. He had also told Nicky about his own struggles to align his religion with his sexuality, and he has no desire to unravel the complicated mess of feelings he carries with himself in that regard, here, now, when it should all be about Nicky’s complicated mess of feelings.

Nicky knows, anyway.

“When I stopped eating meat,” Joe finishes at last, “I just let that cover my bases in terms of eating halal. I forgot about alcohol until you assumed I wouldn’t drink, and then I didn’t want to disappoint you after you made such an effort to adapt for me.” He doesn’t mention the relief he’d felt, at not having to second-guess every meal after becoming a vegetarian, at being able to let go of caring about how well or poorly Western Europe adapted to his needs. He also doesn't mention that he’d still told people he ate halal mostly out of guilt, wanting to perform his identity even at the times he didn’t think he was living it very well.

Nicky sits up, and it’s still very dark, but Joe can tell he’s staring.

“So you didn’t drink for eight years just because of me and never told me?”

Joe sits up as well, to be on eye level. “You learned to cook just for me and never told me?”

They look at each other for a long, intense moment, and then they’re both laughing, foreheads pressed together, trying to muffle the sound because the house is still in mourning.

“We’re idiots,” Joe says, tears of mirth leaking from his eyes.

He can’t quite see, but he can feel the shape of Nicky’s lips twitching into a smile, so close to his own. “We’re perfect for each other,” Nicky says.

“There is no one I would rather be an idiot with,” Joe agrees solemnly.

They kiss, first softly, dryly, and then again, because Joe missed Nicky’s lips by a half-inch and it wasn’t as satisfying as he had hoped. Then again, because Nicky’s hand is firm on Joe’s cheek, not letting him pull away.

“Joe,” Nicky says softly, and then the kiss deepens.

Joe is a connoisseur of all the many sexual moods of Nicolò di Genova. He’s had eight years of practice, and he knows them all. 

There’s Nicky when he wants release, when he’s too keyed up to care much how, handjobs pressed against the nearest wall, biting out his pleasure into Joe’s shoulder.

There’s Nicky when he’s in the mood for sex but he’s too stressed or tired to take his time, when he knows Joe’s in the mood as well but neither of them can be bothered with the rigamarole that is anal sex, when he slides between Joe’s thighs on the couch or they trade lingering blowjobs that leave them feeling satisfied and cozy. 

There’s Nicky when he wants to drive Joe crazy with slow, drugging kisses and gentle touches until Joe will give him whatever he wants, too out of his mind to want to make any decisions, when he ties Joe to the bed and makes him see stars. 

And there’s Nicky when he needs Joe to take care of him. When he wants Joe to pull his hair and tell him how good he is.

Joe shifts over Nicky in the bed, fighting the sluggishness of his limbs.

“You need me, hayati?” He asks sweetly.

“Yes,” Nicky says, and, “please.”

Joe kisses him as thoroughly as he knows how, grinds down against Nicky, finding him already hard and ready through the thin cloth of their boxers. 

Nicky throws his head back, teeth clenching around a moan. 

“My lovely man,” Joe says quietly against his skin. “So beautiful, just for me.”

Unable to move except to grind himself more firmly against Joe, unable to make noise, Nicky is glorious. His neck is an expanse of skin Joe needs desperately to mark up, his arms are corded tight at his sides, his teeth are bared as he pulls in air.

“Nicky, what I wouldn’t do to have you like this always, under me, desperate, perfect.”

A tiny sob breaks out of Nicky’s throat, and Joe kisses him quiet.

“You’re perfect,” Joe whispers again, right into his lips, and then kisses Nicky until he comes against Joe’s hip in rough pulses.

There are tears leaking out of Nicky’s eyes when Joe pulls away.

“I’ll take care of you in a moment,” Nicky says, “let me catch my breath.”

“No need,” Joe says.

Nicky gropes down between them, finds him little more than half-hard.

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking away. “I don’t know what got into me, I shouldn’t have—“

“Nicky,” Joe chides, grabbing his hand and pressing kisses to it. “It is no hardship to make you feel good. I would do if every day of my life if I could. I’m just exhausted, love.”

“So am I,” Nicky says. “I am exhausted, and I am angry, and I am sad, and I want you and…” he trails off. “I should just grieve,” he finishes. “Why can’t I just grieve?”

“It sounds to me like you are,” Joe says.

“But I keep feeling the wrong things.”

Joe strokes across his hair. “Whatever you’re feeling is the right thing to feel,” he says. “Because it is your grief.”

Nicky falls asleep leaned against him, face mashed into his collarbone, tears wet on Joe’s skin.

Joe doesn’t fall asleep for a while.

-

Broth was pretty hard to fuck up, which was nice. In the six weeks since seeing Joe’s apartment for the first time and, thereafter, scarcely leaving it, Nicky had come dangerously close to fucking up ravioli, pasta carbonara, spanakopita, baba ghanoush and paella in no particular order.

By comparison, broth was peanuts.

All he had to do was roughly chop up a bunch of vegetables and cover them in water. It was amazing. He had wondered, for years, what the bundles of celery, parsley, carrots and onions were that you could buy at the grocery store. He had thought maybe they were meant to be rabbit food. As it turned out, Nicky was an idiot.

He closed the kitchen door while the broth boiled, mindful that the burble of the water and the whir of the fan might disturb Joe.

He sat down on the couch, fully intending to open up his laptop and his textbook and get to work studying, but halfway through reaching for his backpack, he saw Joe’s sketchbook, lying innocuously on the table, and couldn’t quite help himself from flicking through it. Joe only ever showed him complete drawings for class, and Nicky had been curious, more than once, what it was Joe scribbled away at in here.

Opening it felt a bit like a betrayal all the same. 

Inside, he found almost exactly what he’d thought he would: finely lined pencil drawings of everyday London sights, pigeons and traffic jams and people hurrying this way and that. There was one of Andy, laughing, beer bottle gripped in one hand, straddling a chair, and one of Quynh, smiling enigmatically, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

And then, Nicky found himself.

One of him, the night they’d met, standing in the doorway of Quynh’s apartment, gesticulating as he talked. Joe must have drawn it from memory, because he’d been very kind about Nicky’s nose. On the next one, barely a rough outline, Nicky had his hands in the pockets of his jacket, smiling at the ground he was walking on. Maybe Joe had drawn it quickly, before he went to sleep, the night they left Quynh and Andy in the club and left to find food. There were several of Nicky asleep, blankets bunched under his hands, curled in on himself and splayed out on his back. There was one of Nicky with his head thrown back in what could only be pleasure. Two months of knowing each other, captured in careful pencil lines.

Nicky shut the sketchbook and put it back, feeling guilty and not sure why. Joe was drawing him, after all, why shouldn’t he see the pictures?

There was just something so personal about the images, something telling about the way Joe had gotten his nose increasingly right, how he’d made its length look elegant instead of beaky, how he’d captured the length of Nicky’s limbs so lovingly, so completely, the worn-out cuffs of his comfy sweatshirt stretching just a bit too short on his arms, how he chased every hint of a smile on Nicky’s face.

Nicky returned to his studies for an hour, trying not to think about it.

An hour would have to do, for the broth. Even Joe wouldn’t sleep all day. 

Nicky returned to the kitchen, then, and drained the broth into the other pot, sieving out the chunks of vegetable. The color was alright, and it really was hard to get wrong. He set it aside and got to work chopping: mushrooms and spring onions were first, because he had been sure about those. The seaweed, he was a lot more suspicious of, but there was little to do with that but chop it as well. Next was a block of silky tofu, which Nicky didn’t so much cut as it disintegrated around his knife. He did consider adding other vegetables, too, but based on how Joe had lain awake half the night, throat too sore to fall asleep, it seemed like better to leave out anything that would be too hard to swallow. He put the pot full of broth back on the stove and rinsed out the other pot to boil the eggs. He decided on two per person, since any less would definitely not keep either of them full till dinnertime, which he fully intended on convincing Joe to order in for – not because he didn’t want to cook, he’d actually come to find the whole process soothing, but because Joe was sick and miserable and Nicky wanted to curl up with him and stroke his hair and he’d spent too long away from the bed already.

He emptied a whole packet of miso into the broth along with a healthy pour of soy sauce. He licked a fingertip of the miso paste off the corner of the package thoughtfully. He’d never had miso before moving to England. His mother’s soups had been hearty things, filled with cream and often based on pureed vegetables. He found he quite liked the intensity of the miso paste, beans and salt and something Joe had called umami. Nicky wasn’t really sure how to use the word, but he also didn’t have another one to describe the flavor.

He let the soup simmer once the miso paste had dissolved fully, adding in the mushrooms and tofu to soak up flavor. Once the water in the second pot boiled, he set the eggs in gently on a spoon, checking the clock on the oven.

Five minutes of watching things boil turned out to be very boring, and he managed another three and a half of reading his textbook before remembering the noodles. Cursing, he raced back the kitchen and fought the plastic packaging open before dumping two squares of ramen noodles into the boiling water. He was a minute late lifting the eggs out of the water as a consequence, but surely a six-minute-egg would not be noticeably worse than a five-minute-egg. 

Peeling the eggs was another disaster: the shells were too hot, despite Nicky holding them under cold water for a good thirty seconds, and even his asbestos fingers hated the burn of hot eggshell. Three of the eggs at least peeled well, shell and inner membrane coming off in large, even chunks, but the fourth was a mess. Little bits of shell came loose, but they pulled egg white with them, and the rest of the egg was so softly boiled Nicky was afraid it would fall apart in his hand. He managed to salvage about two thirds off the egg and put it in his own plate. With two ladles of soup on top, you could hardly tell.

He picked up Joe’s plate and realized immediately he wouldn’t be able to carry both at once, they were too hot. 

Joe still had his eyes closed, but he wasn’t asleep when Nicky brought him his plate.

“Did you get some more sleep?” Nicky asked.

“A bit,” Joe said, his lovely voice rough and laden with phlegm. “I hate this.”

“I made you some soup.”

Joe’s eyes blinked open, still a bit hazy with receding fever. “Nicky, you shouldn’t have,” he said. “I’ll get you sick, you should go home and stay away.”

“And leave you alone?” Nicky asked. “What a terrible idea. It’s almost noon, you should eat something, get some fluids into you.”

Joe sighed deeply, but he sat up in bed far enough to accept the soup plate. “I pictured you saying that in a much sexier context,” he said mournfully.

Nicky laughed. “I’ll just get my plate, too.”

They ate sitting awkwardly on the bed, drops of soup spattering everywhere. The noodles were much too long and trying to wrap them around their spoons only made more of a mess. Nicky made a mental note to break the bricks into pieces next time.

Still, it was hot, and salty and nourishing.

Joe let out a long sigh when he was done. “I wasn’t hungry,” he admitted, “but I feel more like a human, now.”

“You know what,” Nicky said, “you even look like one.”

He ducked as Joe tried to hit him with a pillow.

“If you’re feeling up to it,” he said, “you should get up for a while so I can change your sheets.”

Joe dragged himself to the couch, where he laid down wrapped entirely in a blanket. “You’re a saint,” he said weakly as Nicky stripped the bed and went downstairs to throw the sheets into the washer.

“I am not a saint,” Nicky said when he got back. “Very far from it.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Santo Nicolò, patron of blowjobs and the flu-ridden.”

Nicky barked a laugh, surprised. He lifted Joe’s legs up long enough to sit down and lay them over his lap. “I have a confession. I looked at your sketchbook, while you were asleep.”

“And?” Joe asked. “Scared that I’m obsessed with you?”

“Flattered.”

Joe looked away. His cheeks were flushed red, but Nicky was certain his fever had broken. “Are you sure you want to stay here?” Joe asked. “I could really get you sick. And I know you have an essay due by next week.”

“What would you do, if I left?”

Joe shrugged. “Fall asleep on the couch?”

Nicky swallowed. “I want to stay,” he said. “I want to hold you and make sure you feel better. If you’d rather I leave—“

“I never want you to leave. I just want you to still be attracted to me in two days, when this is all over. And I feel like I’m using you.”

“Ah,” Nicky said and sat down beside Joe. “It appears you are suffering from several great misapprehensions. The first is that you seem to think I could ever find you unattractive, which is ridiculous.”

Joe looked down at himself, in his soup-spattered sweatshirt, hair unwashed and face unshaven and looked up again, eyebrows raised.

“Ridiculous,” Nicky repeated firmly, pressing a kiss to the closest part of Joe’s body – the top of his knee. “The second is that you seem to think it’s a burden, somehow, to take care of you.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I can’t draw beautiful pictures of you, Joe. And I’m not terribly good at saying beautiful words. But I can cook you soup, and hold you while you sleep, and I can’t imaging ever wanting not to.”

Joe sighed softly and pressed his legs tighter into Nicky’s hold. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am fairly nervous about this chapter, because this is the first time we delve into Joe's feelings about religion. I know this is a hot-button topic in this fandom, and it should be, and I am trying very hard to be respectful and also to keep what I write fitting within the context of the story and within what I can believably write. Also just as a note, the modern day bits take place around about now, or maybe 2019 because I tried to write in COVID and then just could not do it because it was too depressing, which puts the flashbacks around 2011/2012, which might be a difficult time to be Tunisian and living abroad.
> 
> Yes, there is a line in this chapter that I accidentally lifted from High School Musical and then liked too much to delete.


	11. shakshouka

Despite having barely slept, Joe is awake at seven in the morning the next day and can’t get back to sleep. He drags himself into the shower, taking his clothes with him in the hope that Nicky will sleep longer if he doesn’t come back in and bother him.

This leaves him at loose ends of what to do once he’s showered, though, and it is with trepidation that he goes downstairs.

Lucia is in the kitchen already.

“You’re up early,” she says. “Would you like coffee?”

“Please,” Joe says. “Can I help?”

“No, no, sit.”

He sits.

“How is Nicolò?” She asks.

Joe shrugs.

She sighs. “He was always a very sensitive boy,” she says. “Ate his feelings into himself and held onto them for so long.”

“He does hold grudges,” Joe allows. “But it is hard to say goodbye to someone you had hoped to reconcile with, grudge or no.” He nods his thanks as he accepts the coffee cup.

She looks out the window. “I had hoped they would reconcile, too, before his father died.”

Joe folds his hands around the hot cup. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he says. “But how did you think they would reconcile if you never talked to Nicky?”

Lucia smiles wryly. “You are very good at speaking. Much better than Nicolò.”

“I talk, he cooks. We all have our ways of showing how we feel.”

She sits down across from him. “I don’t know,” she said. “At first, I hoped in a few months, Paolo would calm down. A few months became a year. Whenever I mentioned the subject, he would rant and rave. I hoped the new Pope would help, he seemed so modern, but Paolo hated him, too. And then Elena was pregnant, and she wouldn’t marry Enzo, and Paolo said that was all Nicolò’s fault as well, and it just seemed the time was never right, and then it was too late.”

“And why did you never get in touch, without Paolo?”

“What can I offer Nicolò?” She asks. “His father would not forgive him. I don’t understand him. What would I have had to say, except to ask him to come back to a place that made him unhappy?”

There is a noise in the doorway, and they look up to see Nicky standing there, hair wet from the shower he must have gotten into right after Joe left. 

“All I wanted,” he says, “all I ever wanted was to know that you could still love me, even knowing the truth.”

Lucia makes a noise of deep exasperation. “I’m your mother, Nico, of course I _love_ you, but what good is that when you couldn’t come home and there was no life for you here?”

“The highest good,” Nicky says.

They’re staring at each other from across the kitchen, and Joe physically cannot take it. “Please hug,” he says. 

They do. It looks awkward, unpracticed, nothing like the warm, intimate hugs Nicky is so good at giving. 

“I’m sorry I left the way I did,” Nicky mumbles.

“Will you call me, sometimes?” Lucia asks. “Now that I’m alone?” She hasn't apologized for anything, Joe notes. Maybe it was too much to expect.

“Yes,” Nicky says, pulling back at last. “Do you Skype?”

Her blank look is enough for Joe to get to his feet. “If you point me to your computer, I can install it and show you how,” he says.

“Well,” Lucia says. “If you had to marry a man, I am glad you chose this one.”

They all laugh, and even if it is more than a little strained, it is a start.

Joe hides out for a while, pretending it takes him more than ten minutes to download Skype and make an account for Lucia. He orders a webcam for her off his own amazon account and then fucks around on his phone for another forty-five minutes. 

When he hears the thump of Nicolino slowly descending the staircase, he emerges from the office.

To his relief, Nicky is still sitting in the kitchen with Lucia, sipping his disgusting black coffee.

“Elena,” Lucia says, when they all enter the kitchen. “Did you know your brother is a professor now? Imagine that.”

Elena looks torn between being thrilled things are civil and being annoyed there is one more thing to put pressure on her for. “That wasn’t on Instagram,” she mutters.

“Instagram?” Nicky asks.

Joe sighs. He had hoped he could avoid this conversation. “The boy who put us on Instagram last year already, Matteo.” He gets himself a new cup of coffee to avoid making eye contact, the whole thing is embarrassing enough. “Apparently we had quite a lot of fans. I talked to him yesterday, he took the pictures down.”

Nicky sighs in relief. “Thank you, tesoro,” he says, handing Joe the milk and sugar. “Fans?”

“Oh, yes,” Elena says. “It was the talk of the town for days, and everyone who wanted to prove they were modern was thrilled for you.”

“Papa must have hated that,” Nicky says softly. Joe thinks of the letter, upstairs, wrinkled in his suit pocket.

Lucia and Elena sigh as one.

“He did,” Lucia says. “He never hated you. Just – all the fuss.”

“The fuss is part of who I am,” Nicky says.

Elena rests a hand gently on his shoulder, and none of them say anything else about it. 

Joe takes a sip of his coffee. “Apparently, Alessandro Lombardi wants to get back in touch with you,” he says, and enjoys Nicky choking on his own espresso just a little bit, glaring daggers at Joe as subtly as he can.

-

They fought for the first time when they had been dating for half a year. The weather was just starting to turn from temperate to warm, Quynh and Andy had been fight-free for nearly three months, and by rights, everything should have been good.

(It was, it was better than Nicky could have dreamed; they slept in the same bed five out of every seven nights, and he had known since day one that he was in love with this man, but each passing day they stayed together, stayed solid and connected and so happy in each other’s company, he gained more of the courage he needed to say it out loud.)

There should have been little reason for this, but there Nicky was, in Joe’s kitchen, chopping onions for his famous spinach lasagna, pointedly not looking at Joe. 

He was well aware he was being childish.

“My heart,” Joe said – pleaded, really. “Won’t you tell me what I did, at least?”

Nicky didn’t respond.

Joe huffed a sigh. “Look, my family will be here any minute, and if you’re going to be like this, maybe you should just go home.”

It was, Nicky knew, the only sensible response to his behavior, but it still stung. He swallowed thickly and turned around.

“Is that what you want?”

“Obviously not!” Joe said. “I’ve been looking forward to introducing you for weeks. But clearly, something is not right, and—”

“I’ve wanted to meet your family as well,” Nicky said. “It’s not that important. Can we talk about it later?”

Joe’s forehead was creased in concern, and Nicky hated that that was his fault. “If you promise we’ll talk about it,” he said.

Nicky nodded.

“And it’s not to do with my family?” Joe pressed. “I know it’s awful, that they are coming here just to see me and your parents are—”

“No,” Nicky said instantly. “No, of course not, I would never begrudge you a family that loves you.”

Joe sighed in relief. “Then may I kiss you, at least?”

“You may always kiss me,” Nicky said.

Joe kissed him, then, and Nicky could feel on his lips that Joe was trying to fix things with this kiss, to show him without words that he wanted them to be whole again. He sighed into the kiss, hating himself for blowing something so stupid out of proportion.

“Is there anything I should know?” Nicky said. “Before they get here?”

Joe shrugs. “Tonight will not be a good first impression,” he says. “Not you. You will be fine. But my mother hates flying, and Maryam hates flying with her, and they’re both annoyed that Baba and Ibrahim had to work and left them to come here alone.”

“Why didn’t they take the train?” Nicky asked. He was sure Joe had said his parents lived in France.

“Maryam has been back in Tunis to take part in the protests, it seemed like the best plan for them to meet up in Charles de Gaulle and get the same connecting flight.” Joe told him. “I’m sure they’ve been fighting about that all day, too; Mama thinks it’s all too dangerous and Maryam should stay in Europe.”

“Right,” Nicky said. “So no politics at the dinner table. Anything else I should avoid to seem less like a stupid white man?”

Joe laughed. “Just stick to English rules,” he said. “No politics, no religion and no sex.”

“I’m getting a degree in religious studies,” Nicky pointed out.

“Right,” Joe agreed. “Hard to avoid that.”

“I’m definitely going to put my foot in my mouth,” Nicky groaned.

“I strongly doubt that,” Joe said reassuringly.

Nicky glared at him. “Easy for you to say,” he said. “You have all this rich, international heritage. You’ve lived in four different countries. All I knew of the world before I met you was rural Italy, and we are all foolish peasants, there.”

“At last,” Joe said solemnly, his eyes sparkling, “the legacy of colonialism works in my favor.”

Nicky was halfway to forgetting they had even been fighting when the doorbell rang.

Joe was right; his mother and his sister were both clearly tired. Nicky couldn’t blame them, he’d never been to Charles de Gaulle, but he had arrived in Heathrow back in September and the experience left him exhausted and angry. He stood back as Joe greeted them both, lifting them up with the fervor of his hugs – easily done as they were both a good head shorter than him, even if he was the youngest.

Conversation was hard for Nicky to follow. His English was fine, and he’d started using Duolingo to learn Arabic, but so far, he could ask where the bathroom was, not follow along while three people spoke over and under each other rapidly about airplane food and Tunisian politics, especially given that every time he thought he’d caught a sentence fragment, they followed it up with a smattering of words in French or Dutch, and he was lost again.

He would never stop being impressed by Joe’s ear for language.

They spoke Italian with each other, more often than not, because Joe claimed he preferred it to English and Nicky relished the chance to speak it with someone, but Nicky was determined to at least understand enough that Joe could speak his native language at home when he felt like it. 

He busied himself in the kitchen while they caught up, to give them some space and also because they had gotten so caught up in talking he was miles behind on the lasagna. God, he was being so stupid about this, he chastised himself again. If he hadn’t had to throw a fit, dinner would be almost ready. 

“We have been very impolite,” Joe’s mother said when Nicky emerged again. “Yusuf, introduce us.”

Joe rolled his eyes, clearly in very good humor at being treated like his mother’s son. “Mama, this is Nicolò, my boyfriend,” he said in English, giving Nicky an apologetic little shrug at the word. “Nicky, this is my mama, Zayneb.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Nicky said, shaking her hand.

“Joe has told us so much about you,” Maryam interrupted, grasping Nicky’s hand almost as soon as her mother had let go. “It’s been absolutely sickening.”

Nicky laughed, unable to help himself at Joe’s embarrassed expression. 

“Dinner should be ready in about half an hour,” he said. “Sorry, I was a little late in getting it started.”

“Yusuf!” Zayneb exclaimed. “You made him cook for us?”

“I did no such thing!” Joe raised his hands in self-defense. “He offered.”

It was only partly a lie, Joe had inquired after the recipe for Nicky’s lasagna, and since Nicky was at his flat all the time anyway, that had seamlessly turned into Nicky just cooking it himself. 

Still, Nicky preferred it this way. It gave him the chance to escape to the kitchen at regular intervals, and it let him prove he was good for something.

“I’m glad,” Zayneb said when they had finally started eating, “that he found a boy who cooks. I worry about him, all alone in Europe’s capital of deep-fried candy bars.”

“I can cook,” Joe said mildly. “You taught me. Nicky’s just so much better at it.” He winked at Nicky across the table.

Nicky wondered if he would ever be able to stay mad at Joe, if his heart would ever be less susceptible to Joe’s smiles and his flirtation. He was weak and Joe was lovely.

Zayneb and Maryam left soon after, citing exhaustion from travel. Their hotel was just down the street, and they promised to return in the morning to make the most of their week with Joe, since he wouldn’t be coming home that summer.

“Come where,” he complained good-naturedly as he waved them off. “You’re all in different countries, now, I would have to get a travel agent just to visit all of you.”

When the door closed, he turned to Nicky. “So,” he said. “Can we talk now?”

“Do we have to?” Nicky asked. “That was such a nice evening, can’t we just—”

“I don’t want to forget that I made you upset,” Joe said. “Please, Nicky. I don’t want to go to bed with you angry at me.”

“I’m not angry,” Nicky said helplessly, even though he was, a little. “I just – I don’t know how to say this.”

“Would it help if I held you?” Joe asked, and Nicky nodded.

Horizontal, on the couch, with his head buried in Joe’s shoulder so he didn’t have to look at Joe, it was much easier to say.

“I hate it when you say…the thing you said this afternoon.”

“What did I say?” Joe asked, clearly genuinely unaware.

Nicky hoped he’d be able to skirt around actually repeating it verbatim. “When I offered to cook the lasagna instead of just telling you how,” he said.

“What did I say then,” Joe mused. “I said, _Nicky, you are a wonder and a marvel to me, marry me, you sweet man._ ”

“Yes,” Nicky said. “That.”

“Should I stop calling you sweet?” Joe asked.

“No,” Nicky groaned. “Stop saying – stop asking –”

“Oh,” Joe said. “Oh.” It sounded like lead on his tongue. It sounded like disappointment.

They breathed together in silence for a while.

“Can I ask why?” Joe asked eventually.

Nicky swallowed, burying his face deeper into the cloth of Joe’s shirt. “It feels like you’re making a joke of it,” he admitted. “Of the idea that we – someday – it makes me feel like it’s not a possibility.”

Joe’s hands were warm and gentle in Nicky’s hair, pulling him up until he’s balanced on his hands either side of Joe’s chest, staring into his eyes. “Oh, Nicky,” he said. “Nicky, that’s not what I mean at all, I’m so sorry I made you feel that way.”

“What do you mean?” Nicky asked, needing desperately to know.

“I mean that I am desperately in love with you,” Joe said, as if he were reading out the grocery list, “and that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I don’t want to scare you off by telling you too soon.”

A wounded noise escaped from Nicky’s throat and he was kissing Joe before he could even begin to think of how to answer.

“Joe,” he gasped when they pulled apart. “Joe, I love you, and if that is what you mean, you may say it as often as you like.”

Any other words either of them might have had on the subject were lost in kisses.

Nicky was the first awake the next morning. It was no surprise, he often was, and last night had been a little more strenuous for Joe than for Nicky, Nicky thought, humming in contentment as he got the coffee machine going. Joe was the one who had decided they couldn’t make it to bed even after a long and thorough joint shower, the one who had folded Nicky over the arm of the couch and fucked him senseless, whispering in his ear how much he loved Nicky over and over again.

With a pleased shiver, Nicky poured his coffee and took the first delightful sip. 

Joe must have been more tired out than he thought, because the whir of the coffee machine didn’t wake him, nor did the ring of the doorbell.

“Lazy boy,” Zayneb tutted, clearly not surprised her son was still asleep. “Some things never change. I thought I would make us all breakfast, since you cooked last night.” 

“That’s very kind of you,” Nicky said, wondering if he should try to stop her. She had a bag full of groceries, though, and Maryam, behind her was carrying a carton of eggs. “You don’t have to—”

Maryam’s desperate headshake was enough to stop him in his tracks.

She spread out her ingredients all over Joe’s kitchen, and Nicky was glad he had had the presence of mind to clean as he went last night, because all the cutting boards and sharp knives were usable.

“What are you making?” He asked, handing her and Maryam each a cup of coffee.

“Shakshouka,” Zayneb told him, getting to work on the tomatoes. “It was Yusuf’s favorite when he was a boy.”

Nicky bit his lip, and then asked, “I don’t suppose you could teach me? I always cook things from my childhood, I was too scared to get things from his wrong.”

Zayneb’s smile was almost as lovely as her son’s.

Joe’s smile, when he stumbled blearily into the kitchen to find his mother, his sister and his boyfriend cooking and laughing together, could have put the sun out of business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out issues aren't entirely resolved in one weekend and that's maybe okay and everyone is trying (some more than others). This is the last Italy chapter, next time we head back to Hamburg. I am struggling so hard because I desperately want to post the end but I'm trying to wait till Wednesday morning.


	12. pizza

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the updated tags, especially if there are pairings in this fandom you don't like!
> 
> Also one (1) explanation beforehand: The Reeperbahn is a street in Hamburg known for clubs, bars and being kind of a reformed red light district where you will still be accosted by about twenty guys trying to sell you drugs, sex or alcohol per meter.

After they get back to Hamburg, they both sleep for twelve solid hours.

They got in late, past ten PM. “Late for old men,” Joe had moaned. “Will you love me, even now that I’m decrepit?”

“Always,” Nicky had groaned into his pillow.

His shoulders had unclenched more and more as they moved further away from his hometown, until he was almost entirely relaxed when they reached the house. Joe had caught him, on the subway ride from the airport, writing a WhatsApp to Elena that they had landed safely. It was good to know he had exchanged numbers with her, that they hadn’t left things on the bitter note from last night.

By ten the next morning, they’re both vaguely upright and making coffee in the kitchen, when an unfamiliar woman unlocks their front door.

“Hello,” Joe says, leaning against the kitchen counter and sipping coffee in his boxer shorts. “Who are you and why do you have our key?”

She starts and drops the key, swearing.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m Nile. I was here to feed the cat? But I guess you don’t need that?”

Joe blinks, looking down at his coffee and then back at Nile, wondering if he’s hallucinating. “I could swear I asked my neighbor, Booker, to take care of the cat, not someone I’ve never met. Pretty sure I only gave out the one spare key.”

“Oh!” Nile laughs sunnily. Americans. “Yeah, I stayed at Sebastien’s, for the weekend, I was helping him with Aramis. He’s really – not that reliable.”

“Hm,” Nicky grumbles. “Maybe we should hire you to feed Aramis directly, next time. If you’re going to be here anyway.”

The cat in question winds his way around Nile’s legs, purring.

“Traitor,” Joe mumbles to him.

Nicky shrugs. “She has a point. Booker is not very reliable. If he were, he’d be here.”

“That’s, uh, not his fault,” Nile says. 

Joe can’t be quite sure, but he thinks she’s probably very lucky her skin is dark enough to hide how badly she’s blushing.

“Andy,” he groans.

“Andy?” Nicky asks.

“Andy decided to show up here unannounced, while we were gone.”

“You should have told me,” Nicky chides.

Joe shakes his head. “You had enough worries, my heart.” He peers back at Nile curiously. “I was sure Andy had seduced Booker’s new paramour and left him even more miserable than before.”

Nile coughs. “That’s not exactly what happened.”

“Hm,” Joe says speculatively, taking a drink from his coffee. “That’s just what she said.”

Nicky rolls his eyes. “Tell you what, Nile,” he says. “If you can stomach Booker’s company for another day, you can bring both those reprobates over for dinner. I’ll make pizza.”

Watching him now, with the knowledge that Nicky had been utterly clueless when they first started dating, Joe can see the differences. Nicky knows his way around the Edeka across the street a lot better than he knew his way around the Tesco’s by Joe’s flat. It only takes him twenty minutes in the store, picking the tomatoes, the brand of tomato paste and, with a deeply amused look at Joe, a mid-range bottle of red wine in moments. He even springs for the really fancy mozzarella di bufala, the one on eye-level in the refrigerator shelf instead of the store brand at the very bottom.

Also, for his twenty-seventh birthday, Joe had given him a pizza stone, which greatly quickens the process.

He cleans as he goes, nowadays. By the time the dough is resting above the oven, Nicky’s washed up the bowl with the yeast in it and brushed the excess flour off the countertop, fully prepared to move on with the sauce.

“Are you going to help me at all today, or are you just going to watch?” Nicky asks him eventually, clearly irritated.

“It’s like I’m seeing you with all new eyes,” Joe protests, almost entirely to tease Nicky. “I thought you were such an expert, when we met, and now the scales have fallen from my eyes.”

Nicky swats his ass with a dish towel.

His sleeves are rolled up over his forearms. Joe still wants to lick them.

Joe gets to work chopping garlic.

“Remember the first time we made pizza together?” He asks.

Arms wrap around his waist. Nicky kisses the sensitive side of his neck. “I’ll never forget,” Nicky says.

Joe leans back into his touch for just a moment, and then they get back to work.

At six, Andy invades their apartment with her usual lack of tact. With her, she brings a somewhat shamefaced Booker and Nile, who at least looks as if she wants to be here.

“Sorry about your dad, Nicky,” Andy says, sprawling out on their couch. “How was Italy?”

Everyone stares at her for a long moment.

“What?” She asks. “You haven’t been back since I’ve known you. It must have been weird.”

“It was very weird,” Nicky says, and goes to check on the pizza stone in the oven (the pizza stone is fine, it literally needs to sit in the oven and get hot with no one intervening at all, but Joe will allow him the out).

Sighing, Joe sits down next to his oldest friend, kicking his feet up on the coffee table for the brief moment in time Nicky isn’t there to twist his lips in silent disapproval for it. “Sit down, guys,” he says vaguely to the other two guests. “Nicky will tell us when he needs us.”

Andy snorts. “Nicky will do everything himself and then complain about it later,” she corrects.

 _Just like his mother,_ Joe thinks with a strange thrill of delight and sadness.

Aramis jumps up onto the arm of the sofa and bumps his head into Joe’s hand, nosing at him until he lifts his elbow up far enough for the cat to step delicately onto Joe’s lap, where he then proceeds to dig his claws so thoroughly into the fabric of Joe’s sweatpants he winces.

“Why doesn’t he like me that much?” Booker asks mournfully. 

“I dunno, Booker,” Joe says pointedly. “Maybe it’s because you forget to feed him and send a strange woman you just hooked up with to do it for you. No offense, Nile.”

“None taken,” she says. 

“Aw, don’t blame Booker,” Andy says. “He was a little tied up at the time.”

Joe rolls his eyes heavenward. “I’m almost entirely certain I do not want to know, Andromache.”

She shrugs unrepentantly. “You know how I travel.”

He does. 

Ever since she and Quynh split, allegedly for good this time, over differences neither of them has ever deigned to talk about shortly after Nicky and Joe got married, Andy’s been travelling the world with little more than a Jack Wolfskin backpack slung over her shoulders. To Joe’s eternal misfortune, he knows that she has one singular pair of jeans, one pair of leggings and three T-shirts. He knows this because he was doing laundry the last time she stayed over, went to get her things, and discovered that apparently, for the purposes of her trip, a bottle of lube and a strap-on were more important than a second pair of pants.

He also knows that she left everything else she owns in her and Quynh’s apartment and that she got spectacularly drunk the one time he and Nicky tried to talk to her about the split.

“Should we really leave Nicky alone to do the cooking?” Nile asks. “Hasn’t he had kind of a rough weekend?”

“Very sweet of you to ask,” Joe says. “Book, I like her, she’s very sweet. Cooking relaxes Nicky, though. At least, I think it does. Nicolò,” he calls. “Nicolò, does cooking really make you feel good or did you lie about that, as well?”

Nicky comes out of the kitchen holding an open bottle of wine and several glasses. “Very funny, my love,” he says, pointedly handing Joe a glass of wine. 

Joe grins at him.

“It turns out,” he tells their guests with relish, “Nicky couldn’t cook before he met me. He learned to impress me.”

Andy throws her head back and laughs.

“It turns out,” Nicky parrots, “my darling husband has been a teetotaler for eight years because he told me he ate halal and was too embarrassed at the time to tell me he forgot that was supposed to include alcohol.”

Andy’s cackles get even louder. “God, and I thought you two were embarrassing when you met,” she says. “I didn’t even know.”

Nicky takes a little bow and returns to the kitchen to prepare the first pizza. 

“Let me know if you need help,” Joe calls after him in Italian.

“Sí, sí,” Nicky calls back distractedly. 

The doorbell rings.

Frowning, Joe heads to the door. He half expects the last three nightmare days to repeat, to find some other long-lost relative on the doorstep ready to throw their lives into chaos.

On reflection, Quynh is almost the same thing.

Still, Joe always keeps a promise when he can, and he drags her into a big, warm hug, lifting her up and spinning her around.

“I was worried,” she says into his shoulder. “I thought I’d come visit. I forgot you’re supposed to call ahead.”

“Calling ahead is for boring people,” Andy says from the doorway, sounding strangled. “How come I didn’t get a hug?”

“You broke into my home while I was away,” Joe tells her.

“Andromache,” Quynh says coolly.

“Quynh,” Andy returns, shooting for unbothered and landing on severely rattled.

“First pizza’s up,” Nicky calls from the kitchen, and because they’ve all been trained, except Nile, they troop into the kitchen. 

There is more surprise, then, more hellos and more hugs, before they are all settled with their first slices of Nicky’s pizza.

“So,” Andy says eventually. “Italy.”

“Yes,” Nicky agrees. “Italy.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Later,” Nicky says concisely. 

Andy shrugs and returns to twirling the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, avoiding Quynh’s gaze.

“Nile,” Joe says brightly. “Tell us about yourself.”

Nile looks between them all, clearly catching the memo that she is a distraction technique. She’s smart, this one. Too good for Booker, in general. “Well,” she says slowly. “I’m from Chicago. I’m studying art history in Hamburg.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Joe says. “I’m an art teacher.” They talk shop for a little while, comparing their favorite museums in the area, before Quynh interrupts.

“Isn’t he a little old for you?” She asks, gesturing towards Booker.

Booker, who has spent most of the meal firmly ensconced in his wine glass, cringes.

“Definitely,” Nile says. “I’mma be real with you, I wasn’t really expecting to still be hanging out with a guy I met at the Reeperbahn at two-thirty AM on Saturday morning by Monday night. I was gonna sneak out in the morning like any self-respecting college student. This has all been very strange.”

Nicky smiles at her. “What convinced you to stay?”

She shrugs, shooting Booker a half-smile. “He makes a mean breakfast. And then your friend here,” she jerks a thumb at Andy, “showed up, and, well.”

“I am too young to know about that,” Nicky says gravely, and goes to get the next pizza out of the oven.

Andy snickers.

Quynh looks away.

Nile looks down at her plate, embarrassed, while Booker looks at her like she hung the moon.

“So, Quynh—” Andy begins.

“Will you ever be picking your things up from the apartment?” Quynh asks. “I can’t store them forever.”

Ouch.

“I figured you’d store them until you got over whatever this is and let me come home,” Andy says calmly.

“You seem perfectly happy fucking your way through Europe.”

Joe gets up and heads to the kitchen with his plate.

“Have they started?” Nicky asks, bent over the oven.

Joe takes a moment to admire him.

“Seems like it,” he says. “Pizza?”

Nicky serves him a slice, eating his own straight off the stone.

Nile and Booker are quick to follow them into the kitchen. 

“Um,” Nile says succinctly, looking shell-shocked.

“Best let them yell it out,” Joe advises. “They used to do this, sometimes, at university, when they fought.”

“They had never broken up for a year, first,” Nicky points out. “And Andy hadn’t been fresh off a threesome with our neighbor.”

Booker thunks his head into the fridge. “I am never feeding your damn cat again,” he says. “Nothing but trouble, and he doesn’t even like me.”

“You do seem like more of a dog person,” Nile observes.

The yelling in the living room reaches a higher frequency, and Joe shuts the door.

“They’ve always worked it out before,” he says. “I have faith in them.”

“That is because you are an—”

“Incurable romantic,” Joe and Booker chorus along with Nicky. 

Nicky grins at Joe, broad and happy, and Joe can’t help but kiss him.

“Aw,” Nile says, leaning against the counter and sipping her wine. “You guys are a great couple.”

“I like her,” Joe says. “Booker, you should make sure she sticks around.”

To his great delight, Booker blushes. 

By the time they figure the coast is clear, when Andy and Quynh’s yelling has moved to the guest room, they’ve eaten three pizzas between the four of them and drunk two bottles of wine.

“Well,” Nile says with something like relish. “I’m too drunk to head home, and I’m wearing your clothes anyway, Bas. Guess I’ll have to stay over one more night.”

Booker trails after her out the door like a man who cannot believe his luck.

Nicky shakes his head, watching them leave. His whole face is flushed pink – it was very warm in the kitchen, with the four of them crowded close and the oven on high. Joe pulls him close.

“How are you feeling, my love?” He asks.

“Good,” Nicky says, then frowns. “I shouldn’t be, I should be—”

“You should feel however you feel,” Joe reminds him softly. “I’m glad if you feel better, now, in our home. There’s time enough for you to grieve and process later.”

Nicky swallows thickly. “If I get very, very sad in about two months—”

“Then I’ll be here,” Joe says. “I’m always here. I will be here if you want to ceremonially burn that letter, and I will be here if you want to have it framed. I will be here if you never talk about it ever again, and also if we talk about nothing else for the rest of the week.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“No, you deserve much, much more. We will have to make do.”

Nicky laughs and swats at his arm. They make their way upstairs together, heading for bed and ignoring the noises still coming from the guest room. 

“Elena and Nicolino might come for New Years’,” Nicky says, just a touch too casually, his back turned to Joe as he switches off the light.

“That’s nice,” Joe says, hiding a smile. “What about Enzo?”

“Enzo?” Nicky asks blandly. “I don’t know an Enzo.”

-

Dinner had been lovely. 

They had been living in Hamburg for a year and a half at this point, but there were still plenty of new restaurants to try out, plenty of new sights to see.

Joe had, at the last minute, ordered the ravioli instead of the pumpkin gnocchi he’d agonizingly searched through every menu in town to find weeks before, when he’d made the reservation. He had wanted to make a statement, but suddenly, faced with restaurant candlelight and red table runners and a very polite server, it had seemed like the wrong statement.

He’d known, when he’d reached for Nicky’s hand across the table while they waited for their drinks, that he wanted something different.

Besides, this way, he could listen to the sounds Nicky made while eating steak, unencumbered by his nerves. 

“Well, my love,” he teased as they walked along the Alster after dinner, “do you still love me after seven years, or will you leave me for that steak?”

Nicky pinched him in the side.

Nicky was pleasantly full, enjoying the rare pleasure of having eaten meat and an evening meant just for him and Joe, no thoughts wasted on work or the strange phone call he’d had with Quynh the other day when she’d asked him probing questions about his future plans with Joe or the frankly frightening pile of glass recycling Booker had carried to the bin on Tuesday.

“I will not dignify that with a response,” he said, ignoring that he was doing just that.

He could feel Joe’s indulgent smile on his skin.

“So,” Joe said. “The world is our oyster. What would you like to do tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Nicky teased, feeling it was his turn. “Are you feeling the seven-year-itch? Would you like to go to the Reeperbahn and be accosted by a few bouncers to go watch scantily clad ladies dance?”

It was Joe’s turn to pinch him. “You have no romance in your soul,” he complained.

“No,” Nicky said, “I gave it all to you.”

Joe turned in his tracks and kissed Nicky, fully and deeply, just as heart-stopping as it had been the first time.

“I want to go home,” Joe whispered against his lips. “I want to be where I am happiest, with you, I want to make love on our sofa and then watch bad evening programming with our ill-tempered cat, because I am happiest right there in the place we have built together.”

Nicky drew closer, rubbing their cheeks together, the rasp of his stubble against Joe’s beard thrilling. 

“That sounds perfect,” he said.

Joe woke up to an empty bed the next morning. It was not necessarily an unusual occurrence; Nicky was a lighter sleeper than him, and an earlier riser when they didn’t have any plans. Still, after last night, he had thought perhaps they would have a lie-in. They’d gotten back late-ish from dinner, choosing to walk a long stretch they could have taken the subway for because the night was so nice even though it was cold. 

They had fulfilled each part of Joe’s wish with painstaking exactness, and delightfully, Joe could still feel it in his hamstrings.

But an empty bed was no good to him, so he rolled out of the covers, pulled on last night’s pants and ambled downstairs.

Nicky was in the kitchen, pulling the seeds out of a pumpkin.

He looked up sheepishly.

“I know it’s our lazy Saturday,” he said. “But I saw pumpkin gnocchi on the menu last night, and I couldn’t get them out of my head. I haven’t made them since our first date, you know. I thought it might be nice. Make a weekend out of the anniversary.”

Joe was on his knees before Nicky had finished speaking.

“Nicky,” he said hoarsely, and Nicky was arrested by the depth of feeling in his tone.

He wiped his hands nervously on his apron, divesting himself of the worst of the pumpkin innards, waiting for Joe to speak.

“I was going to do this last night,” Joe said. “I was going to order those gnocchi and ask you if you remembered what I said to you, when you made them the first time.”

Nicky swallowed. “I do,” he said.

“I know I’ve asked it a lot,” Joe said, “but if you’d said yes then, I’d have done it, you know.”

“Even then?” Nicky asked.

“Even then.”

“Why not last night?”

“It was a beautiful restaurant,” Joe said, groping for the right words, “but it wasn’t…”

“It wasn’t us,” Nicky agreed, reaching out for Joe’s hands to hold in his own.

“Nicky, will you?” Joe asked.

Nicky laughed – coughed, maybe. “You need to ask the whole question.”

“Will you marry me?” Joe asked instantly.

“Yes, of course I will, now get up here,” Nicky said, pulling him to his feet and pulling him close, pressing kisses to every bit of skin he could reach. 

“Wait, wait,” Joe laughed, “I have a ring, you know.” He dug it out of his pocket, where it had been sitting the entire last night, waiting for the right moment.

Nicky’s eyes were wet with tears and his fingers were still wet with pumpkin when Joe slid the ring on – a little too big, they would have to get it resized, and Joe was about to open his mouth to say so when Nicky stole his breath and every one of his thoughts with a kiss.

“I have never been as happy as you have made me, these last seven years,” Nicky said when they pulled apart, and it was Joe’s turn to tear up. 

“I promise I will spend the rest of your years making you even happier.”

“We will promise each other,” Nicky corrected.

Joe pressed close to kiss him again, lifting him up and spinning him around even though Nicky was just a bit too heavy to do it right, both of them laughing and kissing and leaving pumpkin stains all over each other’s skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that's it.
> 
> First of all, I want to say thank you so much for comments and kudos, it means so so much to me to see you guys liking this story.
> 
> Second of all, congrats to the person who called Andy/Booker/Nile in the comments on like chapter 5. I nearly couldn't answer that comment because I was cackling with glee.
> 
> Third of all, there lives, semi-formed in my mind, a sequel to this fic which is kind of about Nile and Booker, and kind of about Joe and Nicky, a few months after the funeral. I've talked about it on tumblr, some, but it would probably have more of a plot and also some weightier themes and I am both scared and excited to try writing it. Let me know if you'd be interested! I'll honestly probably write it anyway, but if you are interested, that will make it more enjoyable. (Two facts about Nile and Booker in this fic that might be of note: a) Andy spent her weekend teaching Nile how to peg Booker juuuust right. b) Nile is lying through her teeth about who she is, and Booker's onto her).
> 
> So, I hope you enjoyed this conclusion, even if my little narrative perspective thing died in the last section because they both had to tell it, and I've really enjoyed writing this and reading all your lovely responses <3
> 
> (P.S.: recipe chapter will go up later today)


	13. bonus: recipes

OK, so many of you have asked literal actual cooking questions in the comments, and as a little thank you for all the engagement and love for this fic, here are the recipes I was thinking about (be warned, they are super unprofessional). I am not Italian and I almost definitely do not cook Italian food properly. Nor am I Japanese, so same goes for Miso soup.

**Bruschetta:**

_Ingredients:_  
Tomatoes  
Garlic  
Olive oil  
Salt  
Pepper  
Herbs to taste  
Feta/any other cheese in brine if you’re an uncultured heathen like me  
Bread, ideally some sort of tightly-structured but narrow-in-diameter bread, such as ciabatta or a poorly made baguette (a real French baguette will have really big air holes)

You will note that many of these recipes have very bad portion amounts, or no portion amounts, because that is not how I cook. How many tomatoes do you use? Idk, how many tomatoes do you/your family wanna eat tonight? For me, the answer is usually between 4 and 6.

 _Instructions:_  
Cut the tomatoes into small cubes. If you’re feeling fancy, drain all the seeds and liquid from the inside, that’ll make your product less of a mess. Chop the garlic really fine, or use a garlic press. Use a lot of garlic. Put it all in a big bowl. Add in a tablespoon or two of olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs to taste. I mostly stick to Mediterranean herbs like rosemary and thyme, I don’t usually put basil into bruschetta because it’s too strong a flavor. I also really like to cut up some feta or similar cheese in brine and add it in, especially if you’re using this as a main course. I can do this, because I’m not Italian. I would never serve it to an Italian. Cover your bowl and let it sit, ideally for a couple hours so it can really take in all that garlic flavor. If it’s not ridiculously hot and gross out, don’t put it in the fridge – you don’t want freezing cold tomatoes. 

Cut your bread into thin slices and toast them in the oven at 200°C, but keep an eye on it, they’ll be crunchy in like 5 minutes and black if you wait too long. If you’re fancy, drain the liquid and then put the tomatoes on the crunchy bread and serve it like that. If you’re like me, take the bowl of tomatoes and a plate of bread in front of the TV and just eat it.

**Pesto**

Mostly when I make pesto, I use [ this recipe](https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pesto_pinwheel_94572). I highly recommend making the whole bread, btw, it’s delicious and very nourishing and you can put literally anything in there in terms of veggies and cheese. 

Some notes to add, though: 

1\. “large bunch basil” is a dumb amount and I have never been able to find basil in bunches where I live, they only sell basil plants. A bunch is roughly equivalent to buying a basil plant and just plucking every single leaf on that fucker.  
2\. This recipe does not include three key ingredients: lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add them. Just a spritz of lemon juice, but it’s really essential.  
3\. I almost always make double because it’s not that much, and you also end up losing tons in your food processor that you can’t quite scrape out entirely.  
4\. Oh right, don’t do this unless you have a decent food processor or at least one of those standing mixers people use to make smoothies, or you will hate everything.

**Pumpkin Gnocchi**

_Ingredients_  
One pumpkin (Hokkaido almost always works, and in terms of pumpkins, they are less of a pain than most)  
A couple potatoes  
250g Ricotta  
3 eggs  
Salt and pepper  
Allegedly 220g flour  
50g Parmesan  
Nutmeg  
Olive oil

 _Instructions_  
Okay, so this recipe is troublesome and Nicky was an idiot for doing it first. It will not work and you will just have to accept failure. And that it tastes fine even if it doesn’t look pretty.

Cut open your pumpkin and scoop out all the gross stuff. Slice it into quarters and drizzle them in olive oil. Put ‘em in the oven at 200° C for about twenty minutes. Boil your potatoes in some water. While that’s going on, mix your ricotta, eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg and parmesan. When your potatoes and pumpkin are done and cool enough to touch, take them out of their respective shells (it should go pretty quickly once they’re boiled/roasted. Just scrape the pumpkin out or use a knife. You can eat the shell of Hokkaido pumpkins, but there tends to be a lot of gross stuff on it and I’m also kind of leery of pesticides and whatnot.). Then smoosh them with a fork or a pastry cutter. Dump that whole mess in with the ricotta and add the flour, then knead it all until it’s a somewhat cohesive dough.

NOTE: 220 g flour has never been enough for me. I always add more. The original recipe was without potatoes, just pumpkin, and I shit you not, the dough was basically still a liquid. Put in more flour until you can handle the dough.

Roll the dough out into long sausages, then cut it into cute lil nuggets and roll them over a fork to get that gnocchi look. 

For boiling, you’re going to want a second person, ideally – one to keep making the gnocchi and the other to boil the finished ones. They’re tricky fuckers otherwise, and you don’t want them all in the pot at once. They should float to the top when they’re done. Keep a plate or a sieve nearby to catch them in and fish them out with a slotted spoon in batches. When you’re about to serve, fry them in olive oil and herbs. Rosemary is the nicest.

**Cinnamon Rolls**

Okay, I make this recipe every Christmas, and I’m a lot more finicky about recipes when I’m baking than when I’m cooking. So this is a recipe you can just follow start to finish, it’ll turn out great, and I’ll write down what I change about it when I make it just in case you want to know. That said, the recipe I’m linking is stolen word for word from The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger and the person who ripped it off should be ashamed. So, Nicola from emoms, you know what you did, [ this is the recipe](https://www.emomrecipes.com/recipe/340).

The main difference to the cinnamon rolls you might know (esp. if you’re an American on the Cinnabon side of the country) is that they’re actually made of bread and not just pure sugar. Rose Levy Berenbaum, whom I adore, also wrote a Bread Bible, and her recipe uses a brioche dough. Personally, I wouldn’t use that, because brioche is a) pretty cakey, and b) dries out really fast. (You should still check out Rose Levy Berenbaum’s cookbooks if you’re into baking, though. Her Christmas cookie cookbook got me through many holidays, even if it is a primal hallucinatory nightmare. At one point, she instructs you to scoop dough with a size 8 melon baller, which is apparently a thing you’re supposed to own).

Anyway, Beth Hensperger’s recipe has that potato in the dough, which makes it a bit more moist and also a bit longer-lasting as opposed to brioche, which is delicious straight out of the oven, but dries out within like 2 hours. She puts raisins or currants in, which I think is gross, but Certain People in my household always insist on a raisin corner. The bit I really deviate from is the Irish Cream glaze bit. Mostly, what I do is mix up sour cream and powdered sugar and use it as a dip. It’s a lot less sweet and also not alcoholic, but it’s still tasty, and the whole thing is so sweet anyway. I’m sure it tastes good with the Irish Cream glaze, too, though! These also freeze pretty well, if you haven’t glazed them yet.

**Lasagna**

_Ingredients_  
~500g minced beef  
2 onions  
1 tbsp tomato paste  
Several cloves garlic  
2 carrots, chopped finely  
Some celery, chopped finely  
Red wine  
500ml pureed tomatoes  
Salt and pepper to taste  
Bay leaves  
Olive oil  
~150g butter  
An amount of flour  
~750ml milk  
Nutmeg  
Lasagna sheets  
Parmesan  
Any other grated cheese (except cheddar) if you don’t have an Italian grandmother who will frown at you in disapproval

 _Instructions_  
Lasagna is not hard to make, and I will not be taking comments about my use of cheese or red wine. This is how I do it and I am not Italian. 

For the Bolognese, heat up the olive oil in a big pan. Fry the meat and the onions and add in the tomato paste so that can fry a little, too. Make sure to salt the meat at this stage (look I know this is a thing chefs fight about. I salt the meat before cooking. But I also like things very salty, so ymmv). Add in carrots and garlic and celery (I often don’t make it with celery b/c my partner doesn’t like celery and it’s also hard to buy an amount of celery appropriate for 1 (one) lasagna as opposed to like twenty). Fry it for a while, until the meat is looking at least somewhat browned. Pour in a generous swallow of red wine and use that to loosen all the fried stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan (if you don’t drink you can skip this step, the pureed tomatoes do the job just fine. I just like red wine). Add in pureed tomatoes, salt and pepper, bay leaves and any other herbs your heart desires. Let it simmer for a while.

Move over to the bechamel. Now, I joked with Nicky, but here’s a secret I hold in my soul about bechamel sauce: It doesn’t fucking matter that much if it’s not perfectly smooth. You’re not in culinary school, it’s just fucking dinner. Sure, you want a fairly even structure, but if it’s not perfect, no one will see or care. I usually make a lot of bechamel, because you need to spread it really evenly on the top layer and if you don’t manage you’re fucked because the lasagna sheets won’t get soft in the oven. (Oh, btw, when you start on bechamel, preheat your oven to 180° C). So: Melt your butter in a pot over low heat and then whisk in flour. Add flour until all the butter-flour mixture is a rough sort of dough clinging to your whisk. Then pour in the milk and settle for a long time whisking. The most important bit is getting the flour-butter mix to totally dissolve into the milk. Once you’ve done that, the rest isn’t as important. Add in a pinch of nutmeg, salt and pepper. Keep stirring it until it thickens. If it’s taking too long, make the stove hotter. It might get much firmer than you thought at the end. That’s cool. Just add milk. As long as you got the butter and flour integrated in your milk and you have a usable sauce, you have succeeded in life.

 _Layering_ : Put a thin layer of Bolognese in the bottom of your pan. Then lay out lasagna sheets. Here’s a trade secret: They don’t make lasagna sheets in the size of your dish. They don’t make lasagna sheets in the size of anyone’s dish. Break a few to make some splinters so you get your whole dish full. Waste not want not. Spread bechamel over the top of the lasagna sheets until they’re completely covered. Then put in a layer of Bolognese, then repeat with sheets – bechamel – Bolognese until you run out of Bolognese. Usually, I aim for 2-3 layers of Bolognese. When you’re out of Bolognese, put another layer of sheets on top, and then cover in bechamel (this is why you needed to make enough to cover the top). Then sprinkle parmesan over the top and put it in the oven.

If you are a dirty, dirty heathen who enjoys cheese, put grated cheese of your choice literally wherever in the lasagna. Also, if you’re low on $$, don’t use parmesan, it’s way too expensive, but also don’t use knock-off “hard cheeses” because they don’t melt well. Just use grated cheese, as long as it’s not cheddar or some other really strong and incongruous flavor. Similarly, you can use pork instead of beef or pork/beef mixture if that’s what’s cheapest, depending on your dietary restrictions. You can also use turkey mince, although I’ve never tried that.

**Hey, wait, Nicky’s lasagna was different**

Yes, you are correct. Nicky was making vegetarian lasagna and halal lasagna, so no meat and no red wine. He subbed in spinach instead of meat and carrots in the Bolognese, and he fried the onions first (which is the right move if you don’t have meat). Basically, he made a spinach-tomato sauce instead of a Bolognese. He put shredded mozzarella in the layers, which is a thing I do with a normal lasagna anyway, but would also help with the moisture issue because spinach is pretty watery. And he put feta on top, because feta is a good match for spinach and a spinach lasagna would be pretty bland otherwise. Do not serve this to an Italian.

**Other alternatives:**

_Veggie_ : You can make the standard lasagna, just use eggplant/zucchini instead of meat. Don’t ask me questions about this, I tried this once and it immediately made me feel sick because eggplants hate me as much as I hate them. I made it with a friend and she loved it.

 _Fish_ : You can make Nicky’s lasagna with an added layer of salmon somewhere in there. I like this a lot, but YMMV. Maybe healthier because people say fish and spinach are healthy and red meat isn’t, but that kind of shit is always suspicious to me. If you’re eating a reasonable portion and don’t have preexisting heart conditions, all lasagna is fine for you.

 _Chicken and Mushroom_ : Look, this isn’t lasagna anymore, this is a chicken and mushroom casserole using lasagna sheets, but it tastes good. Cut chicken into bite-sized bits, fry it up with onions and garlic, add in a bunch of mushrooms chopped small and some parsley. Maybe add in some cream cheese and some broth to make it saucy. Layer with bechamel, or, if you wanna be really health-conscious, make a sauce with milk and low-fat cream cheese.

**Risotto**

I have never made risotto because I don’t really like it (it’s a texture thing, also maybe a leftover thing from being a kid and not liking things that taste of wine). I used [ this recipe](https://myhalalkitchen.com/mushroom-risotto/) while writing for a halal risotto recipe.

**Miso Soup**

Oh look, one I actually do cook regularly.

 _Ingredients_  
Scrap vegetables/broth bundle  
Ramen noodles  
Mushrooms  
Spring onions  
Carrots  
Seaweed  
Tofu/Eggs/Chicken/Fish/Shrimp  
Miso paste  
Soy sauce

 _Instructions_  
Make broth. To do this, cut up either a bunch of scrap veggies or a store-bought bundle of scrap vegetables. Where I live, this is usually parsley, celery, carrots, onions, parsnips…w/ever. You don’t even need to peel them just dump them in with water and boil forever. Because you’re boiling twice over and then straining, you don’t even really need to wash things. Make a lot of broth. You can freeze it if you have extra. There are a lot of buzzfeed videos trying to convince you to save every kitchen scrap you produce in a freezer bag and use them to make broth, and like, cool idea, but who has the time or energy to save the end of every single carrot? Also, I don’t actually make broth that often. So, in summary, you’re fine just buying the veggies, but you can use all of them and also if you want to be more environmentally conscious, you can use scraps you already have.

I wouldn’t recommend using vegetable stock instead, because vegetable stock is salted and for miso soup, you obviously want to get the miso flavor and if you use both your soup will be unforgivably salty. 

When your broth has been simmering for an hour or two, it should be pretty done. Strain out the vegetables and toss them. Put the liquid back on the stove and add in miso paste and carrots and seaweed. I wouldn’t put in miso while you’re making the broth because the saltiness could satiate the water and then you wouldn’t get any vegetable taste in the liquid.

 _Proteins_ If you’re using eggs, boil them while the soup is boiling. I would go for a soft-boiled egg, about 5 minutes, so the runny yolk mixes with the rest of your ingredients. Chicken/salmon/shrimp, I would fry in a pan while the soup is boiling, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper but no more. You can mix and match all of these, btw, depending on how hungry you are, if the soup is an appetizer or a main course etc. Tofu is also a protein, but that doesn’t really need extra cooking.

Make sure your mushrooms, spring onions and tofu if using are chopped. Add the ramen noodles into the soup when everything else is almost done – they cook pretty fast. Break up the blocks if you’re like me and don’t want massively long noodles (disclaimer: I am bad at eating noodle soups). 

Build your plate – put everything you want in the bottom of your plate while the soup keeps cooking: spring onions, tofu, egg, chicken, fish, shrimp…whatever. Then ladle your soup on top. When I make this, I usually make enough soup for two or three days and then vary the proteins I put in by day. The carrots, I would put right in the soup, though, or they never get soft. 

**Shakshouka**

Whoops, another one I have never in my life cooked and probably never will. I’m an egg purist, okay? I could eat eggs on toast every day for the rest of my life and not get sick of it, and I don’t really like it when there are other things in my egg. I just want the egg. I especially don’t want onions and garlic in my egg. I was actually pretty iffy on egg in miso soup for a while there. [This](https://downshiftology.com/recipes/shakshuka/) is a recipe that seems to encapsulate what I imagined Zayneb cooking, though. I hear there are variations with minced meat as well.

**Pizza**

_Ingredients for the dough_  
250 ml warm water  
1 packet of dry yeast/1 cube fresh yeast  
1 pinch sugar  
1 tsp salt  
2 tbsp olive oil  
500g flour

 _Instructions for the dough_  
Mix the warm water with the yeast and sugar. Let it bubble. Make sure your water isn’t warmer than 30°C (that’s significantly cooler than your skin temperature!!) – any hotter and it will kill the yeast and then your dough won’t rise. It should take about ten minutes. Technically, if you’re using dry yeast, you can skip this step and just throw everything together in a mixing bowl. I always use dry yeast and I still do this. It makes me feel better to see the yeast bubble.

Put the flour in a big mixing bowl. Add in the oil and the salt on one side, the yeast-water-sugar mixture on the other when it’s bubbled (I do it this way because salt can also kill yeast and I am superstitious that the salt will get to the yeast somehow even though at this point the yeast has bubbled and we’re just fine). Mix it with a spoon until you can’t anymore and then knead it for ten minutes. If you’re feeling fancy, you can also put some dried oregano or some sautéed garlic in at this stage.

Ten minutes is a rule of thumb, but you want to knead it for a good long while. The Great British Bake-Off has taught me that this is to create gluten strands? I think? Whatever, knead it for a little longer than you think you need to. You can do that window-pane test thingy where you hold up a bit of dough and see if it makes a window.

Put it in a “deep greased container”. Honestly, I never do this. Recipes will tell you to knead it on a lightly floured surface – I knead it in the bowl because less clean-up. It's a little harder on the arms and shoulders but I've never had complaints about the quality of the end product. Same with the deep-greased container, I have never in my life done that. I use Nicky’s trick: Put some olive oil in your hands, get that all around the dough, put the dough back in the bowl. It’s never gone wrong for me yet.

Let the dough rise for about 40 minutes or until doubled in size. (If it doesn’t double in size put it in a warmer spot but don’t break the magical 30°C barrier). (If it doesn’t double in size, the world won’t end, it will still taste fine and probably rise in the oven, you just wouldn’t win star baker).

You can also let it sit for 60 minutes, or 90 minutes. I’ve done both and it’s been fine. The longer it sits, the more strongly it will smell and taste of yeast, so, dealer’s choice on what you like, really. There are some recipes out there that have a dough with exactly these proportions and insist it has to sit overnight or rise twice or be kneaded for twenty minutes to get really smooth. I think this is a question of experience and preference, and I also think, again, this is dinner, not the trading halls of the New York stock exchange or something. Having slightly different pizza every time is a happy accident to help you figure out what you like. 

Anyway, when your dough is risen to your satisfaction, punch it down, separate it into different pizzas (notes on that later) and put stuff on it.

 _Ingredients for the stuff you put on pizza_  
500ml tomato puree  
Tomato paste to taste  
Red wine  
1 onion (I prefer red onions, but a yellow one will also do)  
Pinch of sugar  
Garlic (You know how much garlic you want to use. I’m not putting a number of cloves here)  
Olive oil  
Salt and pepper to taste  
Toppings of choice

 _Instructions_  
Okay, so I am back on my red wine bullshit. This is my tomato sauce recipe, this is what I think is tasty, but by all means don’t do this if you don’t drink or think it’s wrong. Saute the onions in olive oil until they’re translucent. Add a pinch of sugar (always add a pinch of sugar to savory sauces and a pinch of salt to desserts, it rounds out the flavor profile or some bullshit) and the tomato paste. The tomato paste really just intensifies your tomato flavor. Add in the garlic towards the end of your sauteing process. 

Use a splash of red wine to deglaze (aka, get all the delicious bits of flavor off the bottom of the pan). Again, if you think red wine in tomato sauce is wrong, as some people in the comments did, don’t use it; the pureed tomatoes will work fine. Put those in next, and then add salt and pepper to taste as well as any herbs you want. Oregano is what I use most often (oregano, she says, and means whatever herbs are on the spice rack). I know basil is the traditional pizza herb, but I would put that on fresh after baking, not in the sauce.

You can also use fresh tomatoes cut up very finely either in addition to or instead of tomato puree; sometimes I do this to add some texture into the sauce, but if you need to be quick about cooking, why bother? Also, tomatoes are pretty watery and your sauce will need to simmer for longer to get rid of that excess liquid.

_Assembling your pizza_

So, depending on if you have a pizza stone or not, this next bit goes differently. If you have a pizza stone, you put that in the oven and preheat it to max. If you don’t, just preheat the oven to about 200°C. Next, separate your dough into roughly equally-sized portions. I mean, I guess you could weigh it – put some plastic wrap on your scale, weigh the dough, divide the weight by number of pizzas you want – but that’s some fancy shit I only do when I’m making bread rolls that are supposed to be the same size. 

Roll out your dough on a floured surface. Recipes will say lightly floured. I say floured. (Pro tip for the young and broke: If you’re living in a dorm or are just generally low on kitchen equipment, you can use olive oil/red wine bottles as an impromptu rolling pin, I did this for literal years). If you can roll things in a circle well, more power to you. I mostly roll squares, because my pizza stone is square-shaped.

If you’re using a pizza stone, be sure to sprinkle semolina on it before putting the pizza on top. If you’re using a baking tray, use parchment paper.

_Side note: Why the fuck should I use a pizza stone? ___

__You want your dough to be nice and crispy. The pizza stone makes it so. A baking tray won’t let as much heat from below reach the dough, so the middle often gets kind of soggy. Also, notes on pizza stone care: Don’t use baking sheets on the pizza stone, that ruins the purpose, and don’t wash it with soap and water. Think of it as a cast-iron pan._ _

__Anyway._ _

__If you’re using a pizza stone and you have one of those shovel thingies, you can put stuff on the pizza on the shovel and then put it on the stone in the oven. You don’t take the stone out of the oven, because it needs to stay hot. If you’re using a baking sheet, assemble on the baking sheet._ _

__Don’t spread your sauce too thickly. That will make your pizza soggy. Pick your poison when it comes to toppings; if you’re doing a plain margherita like Nicky is in this fic, put sliced mozzarella (the real mozzarella that comes in the watery bag as a circle of goodness, not shredded mozzarella) on top. If you are SUPER fancy and can afford mozzarella di bufala, which is delicious, put it on after the pizza has baked, or all the goodness will bake out. Also put some basil on after._ _

__I believe in my heart that there are no wrong things to put on pizza except hollandaise sauce, but in case you’ve never made it yourself before:_ _

__Things to put on pizza before baking: Most cheeses except freshly grated parmesan and mozzarella di bufala, meats except parma ham, vegetables, pesto, other sauces_ _

__Things to put on pizza after baking: freshly grated parmesan, mozzarella di bufala, parma ham, arugula, fresh herbs_ _

__There may be nothing wrong to put on pizza, but there is one wrong way to assemble a pizza, and if there are any Germans reading this, I am talking to you. It hurts Nicky in his soul when you do this. Do not put your toppings under the cheese. The tomato sauce goes on first, then the cheese, then the toppings go over the cheese. Not all dishes need cheese on the very top, Germany. The ham is meant to go crunchy, not soggy. (Although while I’ve got you here, sweet corn on pizza? Really?)_ _

__Bake the pizza. On a pizza stone, you’re in the single digits. 7-10 minutes, max. On a baking sheet, 15-20 minutes._ _

__Don’t eat pizza straight off the stone. You do not have Nicky’s asbestos fingers._ _

__Enjoy._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not even attempt to add in a recipe for biscotti. I only watched them make it on Bake Off once, that's the extent of my biscotti knowledge.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is in honor of Kacey Musgrove's Butterflies, especially this bit:
> 
> _Now you're lifting me up, instead of holding me down  
>  Stealing my heart instead of stealing my crown  
> Untangled all the strings round my wings that were tied_
> 
> I'm gonna put more in the notes of the following chapters, but I don't want to spoil anything here yet.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://bewires.tumblr.com)


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